Geely, the owners of the car manufacturing company, Volvo has entered into a partnership with the Concordium Foundation to provide blockchain services to China-based customers. The agreement between the parties is aimed at propelling them to “become a leading blockchain technology and service provider in China” by using Concordium’s blockchain technology.

Based on the agreement, 80% of the joint venture (JV) will be controlled by Geely, while the remaining 20% will be under the control of Concordium Foundation. The newly formed JV plans to offer businesses and customers the opportunity of building novel business models. Such opportunities will enable the creation of user Dapps for all industries, including the automotive segment.

According to Daniel Donghui Li, CEO of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, by joining forces in China, both parties will apply and develop the technology further and explore pathways to build a leading blockchain industry ecology to reduce the cost of trust and provide companies with access to a platform with the tools they need to develop blockchain-based applications together and grow in the Internet of Value'”.

Li notes that the essence of this partnership is to enhance the goal of both parties, which is “the active pursuit of transformational technologies by building alliances, and synergizing global resources to create greater value for our end users”.

Geely, as a “technological leader in China,” seeks through this JV to use Concordium’s strong cryptographic, safe, non-permission-based blockchain with ID at the protocol level to revolutionize the business environment. This is aimed at enabling businesses and customers to reduce the cost of trust, while also providing companies with access to the tools that they need to build blockchain-based applications.

The implementation of this JV will be driven by Genius and Guru, a subsidiary of Geely, whose role will be to assist customers in building use cases for their businesses and other novel solutions, focusing on digital identity, regulatory technologies, and privacy enhancement technologies.

At the core of Genius and Guru is the process of building an open financial ecosystem, with fintech at its core. With its headquarters in Beijing, Genius and Guru has already spread to other parts of China, including Shanghai.

Lone Fønss Schrøder, CEO of Concordium notes that this partnership will provide a learning opportunity for participants who will want to learn, build, validate and use their blockchain. She notes that this opportunity will cut across CTOs, strategic business developers, CFOs, and also CEOs.

The expansion of the blockchain industry in China is a well-known development across the world. From a government perspective, China has repeatedly shown support for blockchain development and taken steps to integrate the technology into the Chinese industrial society.

In 2019, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping made public his support for the development of blockchain technology. Since then, there have been several activities that show support and adoption of blockchain in China, including the development of a Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP).

The goal for the adoption and implementation of blockchain revolves around some of the key fundamental characteristics of the novel technology. They include the potential to enable lower costs, faster processing, higher efficiency, and increased transparency.