Startup in cryptography Zama raises $73 million to safeguard privacy of data
Startup in cryptography Zama raises $73 million to safeguard privacy of data
A $73 million fundraising effort was spearheaded by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs for a new encryption business that wants to see the “entire internet encrypted end-to-end.”
After raising $73 million in a Series A investment round, French encryption firm Zama is advancing its ambitious ambitions to allow computation on encrypted data without the need for decryption.
CEO Rand Hindi said on March 7 that the goal of the investment is to encourage the usage of Zama’s Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) technology. The round is being led by significant industry investors Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs.
Zama’s FHE, dubbed the “holy grail of cryptography” by Hindi, intends to enable information processing in cloud computing and make data privacy a normal feature on the internet.
Pascal Paillier, chief technical officer of Zama, told Cointelegraph, “Imagine you have a secret message that you want to keep hidden, but you also need someone else to do some math with it without ever seeing the actual message.”
According to Paillier, FHE is similar to a “magical box” that you may use to store a secret message. Once the message is inside, users can lock the box. He said:
Without ever opening the box or learning your secret, another person may still do the math on the closed box, which is what makes it magical. When they’re finished, you may open the box to see the math’s outcome while keeping your communication private and secure.
Since its founding in 2020, Zama has reportedly added a number of notable customers, such as Shiba Inu, which is using the company’s technology to “build an entire network state,” according to Paillier. In late February 2024, SHIB implemented a new FHE-enabled privacy architecture with the goal of enhancing on-chain privacy.
“Zama hopes to eventually enable businesses to leverage cloud computing and other technologies without compromising on privacy,” according to Paillier. “To that end, Zama is working to make FHE more efficient and accessible for developers to use.” In order to make it simpler for businesses to implement this enhanced encryption without requiring specialist expertise, this strategy entails developing user-friendly tools, libraries, or platforms that incorporate FHE into commonplace digital services, he said.
The chief technology officer of Zama underscored that the company’s solution has achieved a significant advancement in balancing off-chain privacy with on-chain openness.
Without compromising composability or secrecy, developers may implement the “best of both worlds,” or execute private smart contracts on encrypted data, according to Paillier.
