Startup co-founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee joins Accenture Ventures’ Project Spotlight program

Accenture has made a strategic investment, through Accenture Ventures, in Inrupt, an enterprise software company focused on putting online personal data back in the power of users while also reinventing how businesses and governments manage digital data.

World Wide Web founder, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, co-founded Inrupt to help people, organizations and app developers overcome the issue of siloed data. The company’s Enterprise Solid Server platform, which is based on Berners-Lee’s open-source web technology Solid, enables businesses and governments to offer consumers and citizens personal data vaults — which bring together and store data from multiple, disconnected sources in a web standard format and allow individuals to decide which data to share across applications and services.

Research from Accenture shows that 89% of executives believe that their organization’s ability to generate business value will increasingly be based on the limitations and opportunities of their technology architecture. Instead of taking responsibility for collecting, storing, protecting and unifying data across incompatible back-end systems, businesses and governments can organize personal user data around the individual it belongs to, providing more control and transparency.

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“Managing and storing personal data is a fragmented process for businesses and one that makes it difficult for users to understand where their data resides and who has control of it”

“Managing and storing personal data is a fragmented process for businesses and one that makes it difficult for users to understand where their data resides and who has control of it,” said Tom Lounibos, managing director of Accenture Ventures. “Our investment in Inrupt demonstrates our commitment to helping our clients rethink their technology architectures and source new solutions. Inrupt can help empower users and businesses alike to transform the traditional one-way experience of data ownership into a more collaborative experience at scale across multiple sources, which is increasingly important as companies begin developing a metaverse strategy.”

Berners-Lee said, “Thirty-three years after the birth of the World Wide Web, Inrupt is delivering on my original vision of a web of shared benefit, for everyone. With Solid, our potent open-source technology, we are working to create a new internet era by putting individuals in control of their data, giving organizations new opportunities to create value for customers, and allowing developers to thrive in an open marketplace of innovation.”

Inrupt is now a part of Accenture Ventures’ Project Spotlight, an engagement and investment program that connects emerging technology software startups with the Global 2000 to fill strategic innovation gaps. Project Spotlight offers extensive access to Accenture’s domain expertise and its enterprise clients, helping startups harness human creativity and deliver on the promise of their technology.

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John Bruce, Inrupt’s co-founder and CEO, said, “Users and organizations alike are frustrated by the current dynamics of digital data, but it doesn’t need to be this way. We have the technology to share securely, and we have the tools to put people in control of their own data and to allow organizations and developers to access that data when users allow it — when it benefits both sides. Good for the individual and equally valuable to the organization.”

Paul Daugherty, Accenture’s group chief executive – Technology and chief technology officer, recently participated in a discussion about the future of the internet with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and John Bruce of Inrupt during the global launch of Accenture’s Technology Vision 2022, entitled “Meet Me in the Metaverse: The Continuum of Technology and Experience Reshaping Business.” The report looks at how businesses are racing toward a future that is very different from the one they were designed to operate in — as technologies, such as extended reality, blockchain, digital twins and edge computing, are converging to reshape human experiences.