Cere Network has raised $ 5 million for its decentralized data cloud (DDC) platform, which is launching today for developers. The company’s ambition is to take on data cloud leader Snowflake.

The investment was led by Republic Labs, the investment arm of crowdsourced funding platform Republic. Other investors include Woodstock Fund, JRR Capital, Ledger Prime, G1 Ventures, ZB exchange, and Gate.io exchange. Cere Network previously raised $ 5 million from Binance Labs and Arrington XRP Capital, amongst others, bringing its total raised to $ 10 million.

“Enterprises using Snowflake are still constrained by bureaucratic data acquisition processes, complex and insufficient cloud security practices, and poor AI/ML governance,” Cere Network CEO Fred Jin said in an email to VentureBeat. “Cere’s technology allows more data agility and data interoperability across different datasets and partners, which extracts more value from the data faster compared to traditional compartmentalized setup.”

The Cere DDC platform launches to developers today, which allows thousands of data queries to be hosted on the blockchain, the transparent and secure digital ledger.

The platform offers a more secure first-party data foundation in the cloud by using blockchain identity and data encryption to onboard and segment individual consumer data. This data is then automated into highly customizable and interoperable virtual datasets, directly accessible in near real time by all business units, partners/vendors, and machine-learning processes.

The Cere token will be used to power its decentralized data cloud and fuel Cere’s open data marketplace that allows for trustless data-sharing among businesses and external data specialists, as well as staking and governance. The public sale of the Cere token will be held on Republic, the first token sale on the platform.

“We’ve been following Cere Network for some time and have been impressed with the team and the market fit – and need – for a decentralized data cloud,” said Boris Revsin, managing director of Republic Labs, in a statement. “We’re very excited to host Cere Network’s token sale on Republic, which will ensure a decentralized network and faster adoption in the enterprise space of blockchain technology. Their DDC improves upon Snowflake using blockchain identity and data encryption to onboard and segment individual consumer data.”

Developers can access the Cere DDC here. The public sale for Cere token is scheduled for March 31 on Republic. The company said it is working with a number of Fortune 1,000 customers.

“There’s a huge amount of opportunities in this rapidly shifting space for the coming years. We don’t plan to take on the likes of Snowflake head on, yet, but rather focus on specific solutions and verticals where we can bring more customization and efficiency. We are ok with chipping away at their lead while doing this,” Jin said. “We are bringing an open data marketplace which will open up data access beyond the limitation of traditional silo’d data ecosystems, which include Snowflake, and the likes of Salesforce.”