Zama raises $73M for its privacy-preserving homomorphic encryption

Today, open source cryptography company Zama announced a $73 million Series A round.

As demand for robust data protection grows internationally, businesses and organisations need a way to protect consumer data without compromising its utility. 

Zama builds fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) solutions to protect privacy in blockchain and AI. FHE provides a novel encryption technique that makes it possible to compute over encrypted data for the first time, revolutionising what’s possible with data privacy for organisations, governments and consumers alike. 

Over the last four years, Zama has built a suite of open-source cryptographic libraries and solutions that make FHE readily available to developers to build privacy-preserving applications.

According to Rand Hindi, CEO of Zama: 

“We envision a world where data privacy isn’t an afterthought but rather guaranteed by design. With the support of our investors, our talented team, and over 3,000 developers in our community, we can make FHE and privacy synonymous and ubiquitous.

This funding gives us the resources to add to the best and brightest cryptography minds we already have on the team while also continuing to advance the state of the art of what’s possible in data privacy."

The funding is led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs, with participation from Metaplanet, Blockchange Ventures, VSquared, and Stake Capital. It also includes blockchain pioneers Juan Benet (founder of Filecoin), Anatoly Yakovenko (co-founder of Solana), and Gavin Wood (co-founder of Ethereum and co-creator of Polkadot).

According to Kyle Samani, Managing Partner of Multicoin Capital: 

“FHE is the most important foundational cryptographic primitive for the next decade of computing. Zama’s technology is the key to building multiplayer, privacy-preserving applications.

Zama’s groundbreaking work on open source FHE tooling is only the beginning. We are proud to help them build the next generation of crypto-enabled, privacy-first applications."

In addition to addressing data privacy challenges in the blockchain industry, Zama is also building bespoke solutions in AI, healthcare, financial services, and governmental security industries.

The funds will be used to hire talented engineers, software developers, and researchers in cryptography to maintain its open-source libraries and collaborate with strategic partners to develop a new class of FHE.

Lead image: Zama. Photo: uncredited.