Zama, a crypto startup specializing in fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) technology, has successfully secured $57 million in a Series B funding round. Blockchange Ventures and Pantera Capital co-led the investment, bringing Zama’s total funding to over $150 million. The new funding round has skyrocketed the Austin, Texas-based company’s valuation over the $1 billion mark. This achievement puts Zama as the first unicorn in the fully homomorphic encryption industry!

Together with the funding announced Wednesday, this partnership between real-world expertise and capital will see the ongoing development and deployment of Zama’s FHE solutions. Their technology ensures that sensitive information is protected while undergoing processing. This enables a variety of use cases including blockchain technology and artificial intelligence applications. Zama’s protocol removes the complexity of programming for privacy, empowering developers to build secure, decentralized applications without the need for niche expertise in cryptographic coding.

Zama is preparing to release its testnet on July 1. We look forward to the mainnet launch in the months ahead! These launches will give developers the tools they need to build and test FHE-enabled applications, continuing to grow the ecosystem.

Blockchange Ventures has long believed in Zama’s vision. This Series B round marks their third and largest investment in the company. As the firm explains in a recent report, it believes that Zama’s technology can prove to be a game-changer for global technology infrastructure.

"Zama is commercialising an entirely new generational technology that could redefine how confidentiality is handled in the blockchain and, ultimately, in all of cloud computing." - Ken Seiff, co-managing partner of Blockchange Ventures

Zama’s $73M Series A funding round in March of last year is the largest ever for a company at that stage. The investment was co-led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs. The need for this supplementary funding showcases the rising demand for FHE technology. At the same time, it promises to reshape how we think about security and privacy in data.

"This is our third and largest investment in Zama. Not since I first saw Ethereum in 2014 have I seen a company commercialising an entirely new technology that could be as foundational to our global technology infrastructure." - Ken Seiff