While the confidentiality challenges on public blockchains become central for decentralized financial applications, the French startup Zama announces a fundraising of 57 million euros in series B to accelerate the deployment of its full homomorphic encryption solutions (FHE) and prepare the launch of its MAINET.
The FHE, a long -term cryptographic technology confined to research laboratories, makes it possible to carry out calculations directly on encrypted data. With Zama, this innovation comes out of the academic field to become an industrial lever at the service of blockchain, artificial intelligence and confidential cloud.
Zama is developing an open source infrastructure that allows intelligent contracts on encrypted data without having to decipher it, thanks to its FHEVM engine. It thus allows developers to create confidential applications executed on-chainwithout in -depth knowledge of cryptography, by remaining in standard environments such as Ethereum or Solidey.
The native confidentiality on blockchain then becomes possible. Among the use cases already identified: the confidential emission of Stablecoins, the tokenization of regulated assets, private portfolio management, identification without identity disclosure, or even decentralized infrastructure for sovereign digital communities.
This lifting comes at the time of the launch of the confidential protocol of Zama and its public testnet, which opens access to its tools to the entire developer community. More than 5,000 developers already use FHE libraries offered by Zama.
The company claims to have taken a major technical step, its FHE engine is now 100 times faster than when it was launched. It makes it possible to treat several hundred transactions per second by relying on the GPUs, and Zama works on a dedicated chip to achieve performance on an industrial scale. Within five years, the company aims to scalability multiplied by a hundred.
“We believe that in the long term, most blockchain transactions will have to be confidential,” explains Dr. Rand Hindi, co -founder and CEO of Zama. “This lifting makes it possible to accelerate the provision of this technology in the hands of developers and real products. »»
The round table was designed as a strategic operation, aimed at bringing specialized blockchain investors into the Zama ecosystem. “The market recognizes the ability of our team to bring confidentiality to on-chain financial applications. Add Hindi.
For Paul Veradittakit, Managing Partner at Pantera Capital, “the launch of the Zama Fhe protocol is a striking step for cryptography”. He emphasizes that technology now makes possible decentralized “secure, compliant and verifiable” decentralized applications in the fields of AI, crypto-active and cloud.
Ken Seiff, Co-Managing Partner at Blockchange Ventures, evokes a paradigm change comparable to the emergence of Ethereum in 2014. “Zama markets a generational technology that redefines confidentiality management in blockchain, and tomorrow in the entire cloud computing. »»
Zama raised 57 million euros in series B from American funds Blockchange Ventures and Pantera Capital. The total funds raised by the company now exceeds 129 million euros. Post-raised valuation is established above the billion dollars. Founded in 2024 by Dr Rand Hindi And Dr Pascal PaillierZama is based in France and now has more than 5,000 active developers on its open source cryptographic tools.
