Niobium, a custom silicon provider specializing in Zero Trust Computing, has secured $5.5 million in seed funding to further develop and commercialize its fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) accelerator chip.

FHE is a type of encryption that allows computations to be performed directly on encrypted data without needing to decrypt it first. This means that sensitive data can be processed and analyzed in a secure environment without ever being exposed in its raw form.

Spun out from Galois, a leading cryptography research and development firm, Niobium boasts a team of cryptography experts and chip designers, and has received substantial non-dilutive funding through federal programs to advance FHE into commercial use.