The round was spearheaded by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs, with contributions from Metaplanet, Blockchange Ventures, VSquared, and Stake Capital. Moreover, blockchain innovators such as Juan Benet (founder of Filecoin), Anatoly Yakovenko (co-founder of Solana), and Gavin Wood (co-founder of Ethereum and co-creator of Polkadot) also participated. The capital raised will be allocated towards recruiting skilled engineers, software developers, and researchers in cryptography. This effort aims to sustain its open-source libraries and foster collaboration with strategic partners to innovate a new category of FHE applications.

As the global demand for stringent data protection measures intensifies, there is a pressing need for businesses and organisations to secure consumer data without hindering its utility. FHE emerges as a groundbreaking encryption method that enables computations over encrypted data for the first time, thereby transforming the landscape of data privacy for organisations, governments, and consumers alike. Over the past four years, Zama has developed a comprehensive suite of open-source cryptographic libraries and solutions, facilitating the adoption of FHE among developers for the creation of privacy-preserving applications.

“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,” said Rand Hindi, CEO of Zama. “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. Our investors, Multicoin and Protocol Labs in particular, lend valuable experience as we bring FHE to market in the blockchain sector.”

Zama has been at the vanguard of FHE innovation since its inception in 2020. To date, the company has secured multi-million dollar deals in the blockchain and AI space, and has successfully released four cutting-edge FHE solutions. The company’s most recent solution, fhEVM, is the first confidential smart contract protocol for EVM blockchains. Using FHE, the fhEVM enables on-chain state and transaction data to remain end-to-end encrypted during processing, addressing the core data privacy challenge in blockchain.

“FHE is the most important foundational cryptographic primitive for the next decade of computing. Zama’s technology is the key to build multiplayer, privacy-preserving applications,” said Kyle Samani, Managing Partner of Multicoin Capital. “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 the artificial intelligence, healthcare, financial services, and governmental security industries.

“The potential for FHE in both blockchain confidentiality and AI privacy is massive,” says Pascal Paillier, CTO of Zama. “Being able to share our tools with people who are passionate about the same mission is an incredible privilege, something that has only been possible thanks to continuous support, resources and knowledge provided by our investors and community.”

Zama’s team is made up of over 75 individuals from 22 different nationalities, drawn from the fields of cryptography, machine learning, and blockchain technology. Half of the team hold PhDs in their respective fields and are passionate about ensuring data privacy.