Zama Raises $57 Million in Series B Funding Round Becomes First FHE Unicorn

Zama, a pioneering cryptography company specializing in fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) for blockchains, has successfully raised $57 million in its Series B funding round. This round was co-led by Blockchange Ventures and Pantera Capital, marking a significant milestone for the company. With this latest investment, Zama's total capital raised surpasses $150 million, and the company is now valued at over $1 billion, making it the first unicorn in the FHE space.

Fully homomorphic encryption is a groundbreaking technology that allows data to remain private even while it is being processed. This makes it particularly valuable for sensitive applications in blockchain and artificial intelligence. The funding will be used to support the introduction of Zama's mainnet, expand ecosystem adoption, and advance research efforts. The Zama protocol enables developers to create encrypted decentralized applications (dapps) without requiring deep cryptographic expertise. Potential use cases include confidential stablecoin issuance, asset tokenization, private identity verification, and governance in network states. Beyond blockchain, FHE has applications in healthcare and defense, where secure computation on encrypted data is increasingly important.

Ken Seiff, co-managing partner of Blockchange Ventures, highlighted the transformative potential of Zama's technology. "Zama is commercializing an entirely new generational technology that could redefine how confidentiality is handled in the blockchain and, ultimately, in all of cloud computing," he stated. Seiff further noted that this investment is Blockchange Ventures' third and largest in Zama, comparing its potential impact to that of Ethereum when it was first introduced in 2014.

Zama's Series A round, which raised $73 million, was led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs. This earlier funding round laid the groundwork for the company's current achievements and its position as a leader in the FHE space. With the successful completion of its Series B round, Zama is poised to continue innovating and expanding the use of fully homomorphic encryption across various industries.