WISeKey India Joint Venture First Seed Financing Round Oversubscribed

Zug, Geneva and New Delhi – January 13, 2017 – WISeKey International Holding Ltd (WIHN.SW) (“WISeKey”) today announced that its first round of seed financing has been oversubscribed, raising $1.3 million for WISeKey India, a Joint Venture established in late 2016 with leading Indian entrepreneurs to deploy WISeKey IoT and Cybersecurity Platform to the Indian Market.

As per the terms of the Joint Venture, WISeKey India will localize WISeKey’s Cybersecurity Platform and provide Indian customers – both individuals and organizations – trusted identities for the Internet of Things (IoT) objects and mobiles, enabling them to complete secure online transactions with confidence, trust the identities of others, and the identities of the IoT infrastructure. These transactions will run via localized Root of Trust (“RoT”), serve the Indian Ecosystem, and will benefit sectors such as telecom, manufacturing, retail, and e-commerce.

The deployment of the WISeKey India platform includes the development of a full RoT Public Key Infrastructure (“PKI”), a globally trusted Certification Authority applicable for several major initiatives of the Government of India, including the “Digital India Vision” campaign. These programs will help make the country e-ready for various e-governance applications such as the automation of income tax, passport, corporate law, e-procurement, and contract bidding.

Under the terms of the Joint Venture, WISeKey will create a WISeKey Cryptographic RoT in India for IoT manufacturers and chipmakers allowing them to add digital certificates on their chips at the hardware level to encrypt communication and authenticate devices. The first project is already under development for the use of semiconductors IoT chips and Asymmetric Keys to authenticate a very large number of products to be deployed in the country.

RoT serves as a common trust anchor, which is recognized by the operating system (“OS”) and applications, to ensure the authenticity, confidentiality and integrity of on-line transactions. With the Cryptographic RoT embedded on the device, the IoT product manufacturers can use code-signing certificates and a cloud-based signature-as-a-service to secure interactions among objects and between objects and people.

At the heart of this dynamic joint venture initiative is the OISTE-WISeKey Cryptographic RoT which is now featured in over 2.6 billion of the 8 billion interconnected desktops, browsers, mobile devices, SSL certificates and IoT objects. The OISTE WISeKey Cryptographic RoT, a pioneer in the identification of objects, is ubiquitous and universal.

WISeKey India will also deploy a private-label mobile application and service platform that provides Near Field Communication (NFC) payment functions, pre-paid services capabilities, e-coupons, targeted advertising, the management of and access to personal user data.

Carlos Moreira, Founder and CEO of WISeKey said, “We are thrilled to close the first round of seed financing for WISeKey India to launch our trusted IoT infrastructure. With this initiative, we will positively affect the lives of millions of people by providing an interoperable ‘environment’ allowing identification, authentication, and authorization for billions of objects.”

About WISeKey

WISeKey (SIX Swiss Exchange: WIHN) is a leading global cybersecurity company currently deploying large scale digital identity ecosystems with a patented process. WISeKey’s Swiss based cryptographic Root of Trust (“RoT”) provides secure authentication and identification, in both physical and virtual environments, for the Internet of Things, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence. The WISeKey RoT serves as a common trust anchor to ensure the integrity of on-line transactions among objects and between objects and people.

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This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning WISeKey International Holding Ltd and its business. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of WISeKey International Holding Ltd to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. WISeKey International Holding Ltd is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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