IOTA and Microsoft are not partners

The IOTA Foundation has explained that it doesn’t have a strategic partnership with Microsoft.

Dominik Schiener (co-founder) stated:

We have never mentioned that any of the companies which are participating in the marketplace are our ‘partners, we call them participants. We are in touch with multiple divisions at Microsoft (Chicago, Paris, Munich).

He said they were hosting two meetups in Chicago and on in Paris at the Microsoft offices.

IOTA PRICE DECREASED IN LAST FEW HOURS

Last week, the price of IOTA surged by more than 600 percent over the past month and was trading at a global average of over $4.

Microsoft blockchain specialist Omkar Naik released a statement in regards to the company’s participation in IOTA’s Data Marketplace.

He stated:

This next generation technology will accelerate the connected, intelligent world and go beyond blockchain that will foster innovation real world solutions, applications and pilots for our customers.

Schiener then said that the IOTA development team plans to meet up with Naik’s team to help the company in establishing sensors which will allow Microsoft to sell their data directly on the IOTA marketplace.

Supposedly, Samsung, Cisco and Volkswagen also partnered with IOTA, to utilize its Tangle-based solution for data monetization.

The price of IOTA has dropped over the past few hours, falling behind Ripple and Litecoin. The recent price drop of IOTA is notable because, following the statement of Naik and the participation of Microsoft, the market valuation of IOTA increased from $2.95 billion to $13 billion. IOTA is currently worth $3,96.

NO PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN IOTA & MICROSOFT

The original press release dating back a few weeks ago obtained by TNW :

Participants from all sectors and industries are represented, companies such as Deutsche Telekom, EWE, Microsoft, Bosch, TINE, PwC, Accenture, Fujitsu, Schneider Electric, Orange, DNV GL, and many more have deployed sensors that directly sell the data on the marketplace.

Schiener was accurate that IOTA has not entered into a strategic partnership with Microsoft.

The IOTA Foundation and its representatives should have clarified the nature of the relationship between IOTA and Microsoft. The original press release had not specifically stated that the two companies did not sign paperwork to form a partnership.

In the upcoming weeks, despite the lack of a legal partnership, companies participating in IOTA’s testing of Tangle will probablly to continue the testing of IOTA’s technology in the long-term.

Scheiner said:

The launch of the data marketplace was just the beginning. This project will continue for several weeks and is multi-staged.

Even though that IOTA’s price recently decreased, the market valuation of it remains above $11 billion. That is a lot higher than its market cap in November.