Zama, a French-based open-source cryptography company, has secured $73 million in a Series A funding round to enhance privacy in the blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) sectors.

Founded in 2020, Zama announced the fundraising in an email on Thursday. The funding, raised in two parts, includes an equity investment and brings the company’s total fundraising to approximately $80 million.

Enhancing Customer Support

In a press release accompanying the email announcement, Zama stated that the latest funding round lasted two years before its completion. Two prominent crypto companies, Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs, led the investment.

Other firms, including Metaplanet, Blockchange Ventures, Vsquared Ventures, and Stake Capital, contributed to the round with undisclosed investments.

Additionally, Zama received investments from notable angel investors such as Filecoin founder Juan Benet, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, and Ethereum co-founder and Polkadot co-creator Gavin Wood.

The company, founded by Rand Hindi, who also serves as its chief executive officer, plans to use the funds to enhance customer support, advance research, and extend its financial runway.

Holy Grail of Cryptography

Currently, Zama is building software applications based on fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). This new technology by Zama facilitates data processing without decryption, safeguarding privacy and confidentiality in different industries, including blockchain and AI.

The tool, described as the “holy grail” of cryptography, allows businesses to offer services to their customers without seeing their data, which exposes them to more significant risks. The company plans to allocate part of the $73 million to advancing the cryptography technology.

In an interview, Hindi said developers can use the technology without any cryptographic knowledge.

“We spent three years getting the technology to a point where it’s extremely easy to use,” fully homomorphic encryption. So, as a developer, you don’t have to know anything about cryptography to use it. You can use it for any application you want,” Hindi said.

So far, the company, which boasts around 75 employees, said it has been developing its product named fhEVM, a confidential smart contract protocol for Ethereum-compatible blockchains.

The tool allows on-chain data to remain end-to-end encrypted during processing. Zama said it now has various open-source fhEVM libraries and solutions for software developers. While the tool is accessible to everyone, the company plans to focus on blockchain and AI this year to tackle major issues plaguing the industry.

“In addition to advancing our research, this funding gives us several years of runway and the necessary resources to support our partners going into production with FHE today. While our partners span a wide cross-section of industries, we found blockchain to be a key market for Zama to focus on this year,” the company said.

Shiba Inu Adopts fhEVM

Zama disclosed that a series of projects in the crypto industry have adopted the technology solution.

The company said Fhenix, a layer 2 protocol, has integrated fhEVM into its platform to enable confidential transactions in the Ethereum ecosystem. The tool’s addition will also “address the critical need for privacy in scaling solutions.”

Other projects like Shiba Inu and Inco have also adopted fhEVM to scale their services. Shiba Inu plans to use the tool to build an entire network state for its community, powering everything from its decentralized financial infrastructure to its metaverse.

On the other hand, Inco adopted the tool to offer confidentiality-as-a-service to various Layer 1 networks. The protocol aims to improve the privacy of existing blockchains.

Looking ahead, Zama plans to make the tool accessible to the entire internet community, adding end-to-end encryption.