Maltese tech entrepreneur Max Thake’s Peaq raises €5.9 million in seed capital

Peaq, a Berlin-based technology start-up, has successfully raised €5.9 million in seed capital in a funding round led by blockchain-focused venture capital firm Fundamental Labs.

Peaq was co-founded by Max Thake after meeting fellow founders Leonard Dorlöchter and Till Wendler, dropping out of MCAST and moving to the German capital to follow his dream.

The fresh capital raised by Peaq will mostly go towards an expansion of its development team, with some funds reserved for the launch of new products and features to its ecosystem.

Peaq is a Web3 network that offers decentralised infrastructure and tools to builders and users of decentralised applications, or dapps, for machines.

Mr Wendler said that the network’s buildout is an “absolute necessity”, adding that the funding milestone “allows us to continue to strengthen and diversify Peaq’s offering as the network that powers a fully decentralized machine economy”.

“The enablement of wealth creation in the economy-of-things (EoT) based on aligned economic incentives, shared ownership, universal accessibility and peer-to-peer offering of goods and services is an absolute necessity as the world moves forward with Web3 adoption and as our reliance on AI increases.”

Eric Yang, managing partner at Fundamental Labs, said Peaq had created a “unique, open, and collaborative model of economic incentives that enables a diverse ecosystem of stakeholders to benefit from advancements in automation”.

Other investors in the funding round included HashKey and GSR. Delta VC, Mulana, Cypher Capital, GravityX and Moonrock Capital.

Back in 2020, Mr Thake had highlighted the challenges facing Maltese tech entrepreneurs despite their potential. “The start-up culture is lacking,” he said in an interview. “This is why I want to use my experience to show that this sort of thing is possible. I know a lot of people who get close to taking the step, get close to jumping, then they don’t – and regret it. If I did it, it’s possible.”

Earlier this year, he gave a priceless piece of advice to aspiring changemakers, in an interview with MaltaCEOs.mt: “Buy a one-way ticket to anywhere. Get a sense of what it’s like to live abroad. Chase your curiosities. Ask the difficult questions. Be a kid again and ask ‘why’ until your head hurts. Figure out your own personal ‘why’, and then take the leap. Build the plane on the way down. You’ll never have all the answers.”