Siemens, Europe’s largest industrial technology company, collaborates with the distributor’s headbooks for the Internet of Things (IoT) Builder Minima, to integrate blockchains into the German giant’s devices across car, robotic and energy sectors.

Minima collaborates with Siemens Cre8ventures Division, an initiative to accelerate industrial transformation by working with startups in AI, digital twins, cyber security and more, companies said in a press release on Tuesday.

A gradual development of computer capacities for the edges of networks has seen a greater need for security and data integrity to be embedded in these edge units in scale, and this is where IoT-level blockchains are useful

It is an interesting shift as blockchain technology could originally have been thought of as the antithesis to large companies, in terms of being decentralized and removing all kinds of intermediaries, said Minima CEO Hugo Feiler.

“But when the power goes to the edge of these devices, even large business clients have to make sure there is resilience through it,” Feiler said in an interview. “And then the possibility of these large corporate companies to run a decentralized system is also a mission for them.

Minima announced late last year that it was working with the semiconductor giant arm to develop a microchip with a decentral headback embedded in it. The partnership with Siemens, which followed from Minima’s arm agreement, will promote the sovereignty goals of the EU chips law introduced by 2022 to reduce the dependence on foreign chip producers, Minima said.

“Minima allows IoT equipment to run a full knot so that they can independently participate in a blockchain network without relying on external servers or centralized intermediaries, eliminating all key points with failure and secure fully decentralized security, data integrity and trusting verification.