Founded: 2021

Products: Astran AlwaysReady platform

Overview: Startup Astran’s offering is an AI-driven weapon in the fight against cyberattacks, IT outages, and extended downtime. The firm has developed a decentralised, blockchain-based omni-cloud data storage and collaboration platform. This is based on blockchain technology that, it says, provides a cohesive framework for managing authentication and authorisation. The goal is to ensure an organisation’s most vital functions keep running during major incidents.

In essence, Astran aims to anticipate IT crises by enabling clients to build what it calls a minimum viable company (MVC). An MVC incorporates the set of functions and resources strictly necessary to ensure the continuity of vital operations, such as treasury and critical payment processes, during cyberattacks or IT failures. It uses a set of ‘Continuity Kits’ – containing checklists of those processes, and their related up-to-date data – that enable standalone execution during recovery. The platform’s AI-based Astrania tool is used to rapidly model, rewrite, and develop key workflows, while its file navigator associates data assets with specific process steps.

The platform offers a range of built-in standardised components, covering groups (to facilitate the management of user permissions), policies, and configurations. These are intended to simplify initial set-up, and enable consistent security practices across the client organisation. The platform also provides for customer-modified resources, enabling users to self-define custom permissions, groups, and integration set-ups.

The platform includes a dashboard consolidating key resilience indicators and an emergency user onboarding mechanism with autonomous multifactor authentication, independent of the organisation’s identity systems.

Clients: Eiffage, Sanofi, Vinci

Active region: France

Partners: LRE (EPITA Research Laboratory), AWS Marketplace, Google for Startups Accelerator, WAI by BNP Paribas

Employees: 14

Funding: More than €11m

Ownership: Astran’s co-founders, Galion.exe, Sistafund, Newfund, Founders Future, and business angels

Elevator pitch: “Astran’s technology empowers European strategic organisations to assess and strengthen their finance resilience. Built on a secure, distributed multi-cloud storage architecture, the platform includes a dashboard consolidating key resilience indicators, an AI-assisted process modelling module, a file navigator to associate data assets with specific process steps. It also features  an emergency user onboarding mechanism with autonomous multifactor authentication, independent of the organisation’s identity systems.”

Website: https://www.astran.ai

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 0189169312

TMI view: Operational IT resilience is the key here. When digital tools are unavailable, key processes such as payments grind to a halt, often with serious consequences. Astran pre-empts disaster, providing a standalone decentralised solution harbouring the vital processes and data needed to keep clients running regardless.