Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs Co-Lead $73M Round for FHE Tech Startup Zama

The fundraising also attracted participation from Metaplanet, Blockchange Ventures, VSquared, and Stake Capital.
Image source: zama.ai

Quick take:

  • ZAMA will use the funds to expand its team of engineers and cryptographic researchers.
  • The technology enables applications to process data on both Web2 and Web3 without decrypting it.
  • Ethereum and Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood, Filecoin’s Juan Benet and Anatoly Yakovenko of Solana also joined as angel investors.

ZAMA an open-source cryptographic encryption company has announced a $73 million funding round co-led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs with participation from Metaplanet, Blockchange Ventures, VSquared, and Stake Capital. 

Ethereum and Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood, Filecoin’s Juan Benet and Anatoly Yakovenko of Solana also joined as angel investors.

The announcement comes on the heels of ZAMA’s recent collaborations with the Shibarium ecosystem and EVM confidentiality layer Inco. Both companies are integrating fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) technology to enhance the privacy of their ecosystems.

According to ZAMA, THE technology allows decentralised and AI-based applications to process data without decrypting it. According to ZAMA’s website, this ability unlocks a myriad of use cases including tokenisation or real-world assets, confidential credit scoring, biometrics, on-chain identity, confidential trading, and even preventive medicine.

Kyle Sama, managing partner of Multicoin described FHE technology as “the most important foundational cryptographic primitive for the next decade of computing.”

ZAMA said it plans to use the fresh capital 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 Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) applications.”

The company has built a suite of open-source cryptographic libraries and solutions that make FHE technology readily available to developers to build privacy-preserving applications. 

Commenting on the fundraising, Rand Hindi, CEO of Zama said in a statement: “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.”

According to Hindi, his company’s backers especially the lead investors in the round Multicoin and Protocol Labs in particular, will lend valuable experience to the team as it looks to bring FHE to market in the blockchain sector.

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