Participation in start-up Bot Labs: Ringier invests in blockchain technology

Bot Labs develops technological innovations for companies on the basis of blockchain and offers cooperation models. Robin Lingg, Head of Marketplaces Ringier, on the investment: "With the support of Bot Labs, we are trying to better understand and learn to apply the potential of blockchain technology for the digital assets within our portfolio. As a digital media company - family-owned like Hubert Burda Media - our ambition is to continue to successfully drive Ringier's digital transformation. In addition to investments in companies, we see investments in basic technologies as investments in the future of our Group.

"Blockchain technology has the disruptive power to eliminate intermediaries and thus represents a great opportunity for us publishers to free the connection to our consumers from the clutches of the monopolists and to return the value creation along our content in the digital world to its actual purpose: to finance high-quality journalism," says CEO Philipp Welte, who represents Hubert Burda Media as a shareholder of Bot Labs. "We are therefore extremely pleased that Ringier, another renowned media company, wants to utilize the potential of this new basic technology for its business."

Founder and Bot Labs CEO Ingo Rübe explains: "Our open and free protocol makes blockchain usable for business and administration and enables countless new business models for almost all industries". Blockchain enables secure transactions of all kinds without intermediaries. It is regarded as a democratic, consumer-friendly and secure technology that can make intermediaries of all kinds superfluous and eliminate data misuse and data silos.