Zama: Rewriting the Rules of the Internet with Fully Homomorphic Encryption

What Zama Does

Zama operates as an open-source cryptography company dedicated to building state-of-the-art Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) solutions specifically for blockchain environments. The company’s overarching mission is to safeguard digital privacy by enabling end-to-end encryption for the entire internet, serving as a leader in the development and implementation of homomorphic encryption technology. A key component of the Zama platform is its accessibility; it allows data scientists and developers to construct FHE applications without requiring prior knowledge of complex cryptography.

How Zama Fits into the Current Cryptographic Landscape

The technology industry has recently seen a surge of interest in the potential of FHE. Major tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft, and IBM have launched initiatives to explore this space. For instance, Apple recently announced a swift-homomorphic-encryption initiative utilizing the Brakerski-Fan-Vercauteren scheme. Because of Apple’s ability to integrate complex tools into mainstream workflows—specifically through the widely used Swift programming language—industry interest in FHE has spiked significantly.

Several technical breakthroughs have also pushed FHE closer to large-scale deployment. These include optimizations to cryptographic schemes like CKKS for AI tasks, improved algorithms that speed up bootstrapping processes to refresh ciphertexts, and hardware acceleration through GPUs and FPGAs. However, while general-purpose FHE advances, the blockchain sector faces a specific challenge. Despite strides in institutional adoption and regulatory clarity, Web3 still lacks robust privacy. Unlike competitors focusing on general applications, Zama specifically targets this gap, making FHE practical for blockchain to redefine data privacy and enable real-world Web3 use cases.

The Origin and Growth of Zama

Based in Paris, France, Zama was founded in 2020 by Dr. Rand Hindi and Dr. Pascal Paillier. The company was established on the fundamental belief that privacy should be the default setting in the digital world rather than an exception. The founders set out to solve a critical problem: while data is valuable for AI and blockchain, it is almost always exposed during processing. They aimed to make privacy-preserving computation accessible so that organizations could utilize data without compromising confidentiality.

Since its inception, Zama has garnered substantial support from leading investors. In March 2024, the company raised $73 million in a Series A round led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs, with participation from key industry figures like Gavin Wood and Anatoly Yakovenko. This was followed by a $57 million Series B round in June 2025, co-led by Blockchange Ventures and Pantera Capital. These financial milestones drove the valuation of Zama to over $1 billion, establishing it as the first unicorn in the FHE space.

The Zama Solution: A New Standard for Web3 Privacy

Zama is engineering the next generation of privacy-preserving blockchain technology with FHE at its core. This technique allows data to be processed blindly, meaning computation can occur on encrypted data without ever needing to decrypt it. The centerpiece of this technology is fhEVM, the core framework of the Zama Confidential Blockchain Protocol. This framework guarantees end-to-end encryption of transactions, ensuring data is never visible to anyone, while maintaining composability and ensuring that encrypted states can coexist with public ones without impacting existing decentralized applications (dApps).

The Zama Confidential Blockchain Protocol enables developers to build confidential dApps without cryptographic expertise, initially on Ethereum with future support planned for Solana and other EVM chains in 2026. Zama has achieved significant technical milestones, including improving FHE performance by 100x, building a community of over 5,000 developers, and capturing a 70% market share among developers using FHE. The vision for Zama extends beyond simple encryption; the company aims to establish a new standard in Web3 confidentiality, effectively creating the blockchain equivalent of HTTPS.

Real-World Applications of Zama Technology

By transitioning FHE from concept to reality, Zama is facilitating a future where industries can operate with complete confidentiality. In healthcare, institutions can analyze patient data collaboratively to train AI models and improve treatments without ever exposing individual personal information. Similarly, in the financial sector, Zama allows banks and insurers to run joint risk assessments and fraud detection on encrypted data without revealing proprietary information.

Within the blockchain ecosystem, Zama unlocks vital use cases. It enables "Onchain Finance," allowing institutions to issue confidential stablecoins and tokenize assets securely. It supports "Confidential Tokens," where holders can manage portfolios without publicly disclosing their balances. Furthermore, Zama facilitates "Proof of Humanity," allowing applications to verify users are human without revealing their identities, and enables "Network States" to operate governance and registries confidentially on public blockchains.

The Team Driving Innovation at Zama

The scientific vision of Zama is driven by its co-founders: Dr. Pascal Paillier, the CTO and a pioneer known for inventing Paillier Encryption, and Dr. Rand Hindi, the CEO and a serial privacy entrepreneur who previously founded Snips. Together, they lead a diverse team of over 105 people from 26 nationalities. Notably, almost half of the team holds PhDs, making Zama home to one of the world’s largest research teams dedicated to FHE.

The culture at Zama is built on the belief that privacy should be a non-issue because it is guaranteed. The work environment is designed to be remote-friendly and conducive to research, attracting top talent from academia and major technology firms. Jeremy Bradley, the COO of Zama, has described the culture as one where brilliance meets balance, allowing the team to solve complex confidentiality problems without sacrificing a human-centric work environment.

Perspectives from Zama Leadership

Dr. Rand Hindi, Zama CEO, commented on the future of the industry: “With the potential of fully homomorphic encryption being realized, Zama is working towards a world where confidentiality is not an optional feature, but the foundation of every digital interaction. Our goal is to make encryption as seamless and ubiquitous as the internet itself — an invisible layer of trust that underpins everything from financial transactions to AI computations.”

Find out more about Zama: https://www.zama.ai