Irish confidential computing start-up Oblivious has raised €5.35 million

Dublin-based confidential computing start-up Oblivious has raised a Seed round of €5.35 million to bring trust between organisations where confidential data is exposed. 

The round was led by Cavalry Ventures and includes Act VC, Atlantic Bridge, Firestreak Ventures, Expeditions Fund and Hustle Fund.

Oblivious was founded by Robert Pisarczyk and Jack Ftizsimons to solve issues they were seeing when data scientists were given access to areas of very sensitive data or were restricted from accessing areas because of the risk that sensitive data would be exposed. They were searching for a solution to create confidential computing. 

“Collectively, the tech industry has put hundreds of billions into building robust data lakes and advanced data science tooling, but standard role-based access control still remains untouched since the 80s. We focus on building tools that allow data scientists to access and use the world's most impactful data while ensuring it is used for its intended purpose. And we call it ‘Eyes-Off Data Science’,” says Robert Pisarczyk, founder and CEO of Oblivious.

The aptly named Oblivious software allows data scientists and machine learning models to work on sensitive data while enforcing confidentiality constraints and brokering trust between businesses.

“Put yourself in the shoes of Uber, Airbnb or any modern tech-enabled company. You can’t simply hand your data scientist the keys to customer data. Like with any powerful resource it could be used for great good or great evil,” says Pisarczyk, “we believe that by restricting how data is used, through modern privacy enhancing technologies, we can open the doors to the next wave of data innovations while providing the safety rails to ensure its only used for good.”

Oblivious counts Telecom giants, United Nations and Official Statistics Offices, AI startups, PET communities among its clients. 

"The impeccable timing of the two founders has truly aligned with the growing importance of data and AI in our world. As AI systems act as a catalyst for extracting valuable insights from information, it is crucial to ensure the integrity of these models and maintain the confidentiality of the processed data. Oblivious is developing the essential tools that data scientists will undoubtedly rely on in the near future to uphold privacy and trustworthiness in their work." says Claude Ritter, Managing Partner at Cavalry Ventures.