a former senior Google The executive wants to make it easier to search the blockchain with his new venture.

Sridhar Ramaswamy, who ran the internet giant’s ad business from 2013 to 2018, has started a new company called nxyz. The company will officially launch on Wednesday after attracting investment from several major investors, he told CNBC exclusively.

Armed with a rolodex of eminent Silicon Valley connections, Ramaswamy secured $40 million in funding in May to set up nxyz as a separate entity from Neeva, a privacy-focused search engine he also owns. The round was led by Paradigm, a prolific cryptocurrency trader, and “Web3,” while Coinbase, Sequoia, and Greylock, where Ramaswamy is a partner, also invested. Ramaswamy will remain as CEO of Neeva while he also leads nxyz.

Nxyz was conceived earlier this year by a team of engineers at Neeva, a search engine that does not include ads and blocks online tracking tools. Ramaswamy built Neeva in 2019 after leaving his role as senior vice president of Google’s $150 billion advertising business a year earlier, which he says was out of disappointment with his relentless focus on maintaining growth at the expense of customers. users.

In a March blog post on Neeva’s website, nxyz is described as “an experiment bringing the same user-first ethos of Neeva’s search to web3.” Web3 loosely refers to the idea of ​​a more decentralized version of the internet powered by cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens, and other technologies. It encourages putting data ownership in the hands of users instead of Big Tech platforms, which use people’s personal information to target them with ads.

“For me, the big breakthrough with a blockchain is that it introduces this idea of ​​decentralized computing, where you’re uploading a piece of code to a blockchain and the code runs on it,” Ramaswamy said in an interview with CNBC. “No one is in charge. It is a decentralized storage that is owned by a collective. In addition, they also have a utility in the form of a native token coin that has been designed to incentivize the system.”

Nxyz scours blockchains and associated apps for sought after data on things like how much someone has in their crypto wallet or what NFTs they are buying. It then transmits this data to developers in real time using tools called APIs. The platform currently supports the Ethereum, Polygon, and Binance networks, and Ramaswamy says he is looking to include more over time.

Unlike Neeva and Google — the giant “Web2” that Neeva wants to disrupt — nxyz’s Web3 search software is not aimed at consumers. Rather, it wants to offer clean blockchain data to big crypto firms, sort of like Bloomberg sells Wall Street institutions access to financial data and news with its terminal business. Ramaswamy named crypto escrow firm BitGo as one of the first clients she partnered with.

Blockchain data analysis is a complicated process, he explained. Smart contracts, programs that power cryptographic applications, can be given designated tasks. But once they’re out in the wild, knowing what functions they perform in practice can be difficult. As an example, bugs in key smart contracts known as blockchain bridges have opened the industry up to mega hacks, with bridges from Binance and Axie Infinity maker Sky Mavis suffering nine-figure breaches. More information about the performance of those tools could improve security.

“It’s one thing to write smart contracts that can do things. But do you need to have a record of what they did? And how can I get that out there?” Ramaswamy said. “It’s everything from, ‘What’s in your wallet?’ to, ‘If you have traded a USDC token with ethereum, what was the trade and when did it happen?'”

The launch of Nxyz comes as crypto investors recover from a deep pullback in token prices, with bitcoins, the world’s largest digital currency, down 70% from its all-time high. Among the main factors driving the current so-called “crypto winter” are higher interest rates from the Federal Reserve and an industry-wide liquidity crunch.

That has led to a tougher environment for crypto and blockchain-focused startups looking to attract capital, with Pitchbook data showing VC investment in such companies fell 37% to $4.4 billion in the third quarter. quarter from $7.6 billion the prior quarter. Of those that have risen successfully, several see their valuations hold steady or fall. Nxyz declined to disclose its valuation.

Ramaswamy said the company was lucky to raise funds when it did. Investor talks began in mid-April and concluded in mid-May, around the same time that the so-called terraUSD stablecoin and its sister token luna began to crash. When asked about sour investor sentiment towards cryptocurrencies, the businessman said his company was “well funded to get through the crypto winter,” adding that he only needs around 20 employees. “I think it will be a very different trajectory” to Web3 and crypto companies that have been in financial trouble, he said. “We want to be very aware of the current climate, build carefully, and make sure we’re generating revenue from the start as well.”

The Nxyz team is currently split between Mountain View, Austin, and New York.

While the share prices of cryptocurrency trading platforms such as coin base are down quite a bit, the infrastructure that powers “Web3” is still a hot target. Companies like ConsenSys, MoonPay and Ramp have raised considerable amounts of cash this year. “Currently, Web3 developers lack a fast, flexible, and reliable infrastructure to support their applications, which is preventing the industry from broad adoption,” said Matt Huang, co-founder and managing partner of Paradigm. “Nxyz has a truly superlative team that has built the best data indexing infrastructure for Web3, and we at Paradigm are delighted to support them.”

Still, Web3 has been a punching bag for some leaders in Silicon Valley, like Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and tesla CEO Elon Musk. A “general concern” people have when it comes to Web3 is that there is no “common term and definition,” according to John Lee, blockchain lead at the e-commerce company. Shopify.

“Every time someone in the general public has a conversation with someone in the industry, they get a different definition, they get a different explanation,” Lee said. “It’s confusing for people.”

Meanwhile, the space is rife with scams, including the infamous “rug pulls” in which scammers flee a fake token project once they’ve pocketed enough money. Ramaswamy admits that “there have been a lot of scams” on Web3. But he expects more practical use cases, like gaming, concert tickets, and remittances, will eventually catch on.

As to whether Web3 can break the dominance of digital giants like Google and Goal, Ramaswamy said that “the dice are loaded against” upstarts like his. However, staff at Big Tech companies are increasingly leaving to join roles at crypto companies. That includes Ramaswamy’s eldest son who, according to his father, recently joined a Web3 company.

Asked for an opinion on his former employer, Ramaswamy said he believes the company has become a victim of its own success. “I think Google is an incredibly successful company,” he said. “But their growth mindset, combined with a monopoly position, produces a poor result.”

“Let’s say there’s only one toothpaste manufacturer for the whole of the UK. They’d be like, yeah, £1 isn’t enough. Let’s chalk it up to £1.20,” he added. “Google is kind of like this, where it says, ‘Everyone uses us to search, you can keep raising the price and that’s fine.’ I don’t think people are mean,” a reference to “Don’t Be Mean,” Google’s corporate code of conduct. Google: “I think it’s a system that demands growth at all costs.”

Google was not immediately available for comment at the time of publication. The company previously told The Telegraph newspaper that its ads “help businesses of all sizes grow and connect with new customers.”