Zama 的加密计算赌注：7300 万美元 A 轮融资，让同态加密真正可用

做的是什么生意

Open-source FHE libraries — Concrete, TFHE-rs and fhEVM — that let developers compute on encrypted data for AI privacy and confidential blockchain smart contracts.

启动资金：$8M pre-seed plus seed, then a $73M Series A co-led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs on March 7, 2024 at a valuation approaching $400M — $81M total, the largest round ever for a homomorphic-encryption company (TechCrunch).

起因

Rand Hindi and Pascal Paillier built Zama in Paris around homomorphic encryption; the underlying work began in 2016, and a 2019 breakthrough sped up the calculations roughly 100x, making the product bet credible.

经过

Zama released four open-source libraries adopted by 3,000 developers, commercialized first with blockchain customers willing to pay per transaction or per contract, and signed more than $50M in contract value within six months of starting to sell; the Series A, announced March 7, 2024, valued the company at nearly $400M.

结果

Still independent and scaling at the raise: a 75-person team, with Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Ethereum/Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood among the round's participants alongside Estonian deep-tech investor Metaplanet.

可借鉴之处

当你在开源工具中免费提供最难的部分，并为应用收费时，一项登月科技就会成为一门生意——最早的付费客户往往是那些因为法律强制而需要它的人。