Zama, a prominent open-source cryptography company specializing in Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), has recently announced the successful conclusion of a $73 million Series A funding round. This funding round signifies one of the largest in the history of France. The investment was co-led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs, with additional contributions from Metaplanet, Blockchange, VSquared, Stake Capital, and Portal Ventures. Furthermore, notable figures in the blockchain and AI industries, including Juan Benet of Filecoin/IPFS, Gavin Wood of Ethereum/Polkadot, Anatoly Yakovenko of Solana, Julien Bouteloup of StakeDAO, and Tarun Chitra of Gauntlet, have joined as strategic investors.
Zama’s primary objective is to fully encrypt the internet using FHE, which is considered the “holy grail” of cryptography. Over the past four years, Zama has made significant progress in advancing the practical application of FHE. Initially, FHE was predominantly theoretical and encountered challenges regarding speed, cost, and complexity. However, Zama’s efforts have addressed these issues, making FHE accessible to developers without an extensive background in cryptography for the first time.
The company offers a variety of open-source FHE libraries and solutions, enabling individual developers and large corporations to implement end-to-end encrypted applications. Zama’s FHE scheme, built upon TFHE, supports various applications, expanding FHE’s applicability across diverse sectors.
With the recent funding, Zama intends to expedite its research and development efforts, with the aim of enhancing the performance and usability of its FHE solutions. The company has already achieved a 20x improvement in the speed of its FHE scheme and aims to achieve a 100x increase in the near future. This improvement is vital for unlocking confidential blockchain and AI use cases. Additionally, Zama anticipates releasing dedicated FHE hardware accelerators, enabling web-scale applications, including confidential Large Language Models (LLMs) and encrypted Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings.
The successful completion of the $73 million Series A funding round is a significant milestone for Zama and serves as a testament to the growing demand for innovative encryption technologies. This substantial investment will undoubtedly propel Zama forward in its quest to revolutionize internet encryption with FHE technology. Stay tuned for more updates on the latest developments in the world of FinTech.
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