Dublin data privacy startup evervault raises $3.2 million seed led by Sequoia

Dublin-based startup evervault has raised a $3.2 million seed to fund its mission of making data privacy simple and accessible for all. The round was led by Sequoia Capital, with support from Kleiner Perkins, Frontline, and SV Angel, among others.

Founded by Forbes’ 2018 30 Under 30, 19 year-old Shane Curran, evervault is building a cloud-based secure processing product: infrastructure that bridges secure cloud hardware and web/mobile applications, making it a product feature rather than a compliance issue.

"Data is king, and the team at evervault is on a mission to solve the 'how' of ensuring data privacy. Their developer-first approach ensures that data privacy becomes part of the development fabric, instead of an afterthought left for compliance to troubleshoot," said Mamoon Hamid, partner at Kleiner Perkins.

The Irish company hosts a network of hardware-secured data processing enclaves which allows developers to easily deploy their applications in privacy cages — where information can be processed securely in hardware-hardened containers with strictly controlled access — without changing the way they build their software. Developers integrate with the evervault API through their publicly available developer SDKs for all major architectures and frameworks.

Shane Curran, founder and CEO said, “It is disappointing that the data privacy toolkit for developers is still entirely lacklustre in 2019. The support and backing from some of the best investors in the world provides an exciting opportunity to accelerate us on our path to fundamentally re-architect how our personal data is handled. I believe we can start a generational shift in how we can approach these problems, by building the privacy tools necessary to support technology builders and creators.”

Such a young CEO does indeed represent a new generation. The 19 year-old won the 2017 BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition for research in cryptography and data privacy while he was still in secondary school.

“Shane has a special combination of clear vision, deep thoughtfulness, and insatiable curiosity,” said Stephanie Zhan, partner at Sequoia. “We are thrilled to partner with evervault at the seed, to solve for today's massive data breaches and build simple developer tools for data privacy.”