Niobium on Wednesday announced raising $23 million in an oversubscribed funding round that brings the total raised by the company to over $28 million.
Founded in 2021, Dayton, Ohio-based Niobium is providing a hardware accelerator purpose-built for fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) that guarantees data privacy.
The startup’s custom PCIe card accelerates the performance of FHE software, enabling computing on encrypted data and tackling the risks posed by the emergence of quantum computing to existing encryption standards.
Niobium says its hardware accelerator comes with support for all major FHE schemes and can be easily inserted into any server for fast integration with existing workflows.
According to the company, its solution makes zero-trust computing (ZTC) feasible by supporting high-performance encrypted data processing.
The funding came from new investors Blockchange Ventures, ADVentures, Korea Development Bank (KDB), JobsOhio Growth Capital, Rev1 Angels, and Silicon Catalyst Ventures, and previous investors Fusion Fund, Morgan Creek Capital, Rev1 Ventures, and Ohio Innovation Fund.
The new funds will be used to accelerate the development of the second-generation Niobium fully homomorphic encryption platforms, as they transition to production-ready solutions.
Niobium will use the investment to finalize production silicon architecture, start building a production application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), and improve infrastructure for early deployments.
“The rise of AI, quantum computing, and distributed computing has expanded possibilities and risks in the data economy. Niobium is building the hardware foundation for the encrypted future, where privacy is mathematically guaranteed,” Niobium CEO Kevin Yoder said.
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