Zama Raises $57M to Become First FHE-Focused Unicorn

Zama, a cryptography firm specializing in fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) for blockchain applications, secured $57 million in a Series B round co-led by Blockchange Ventures and Pantera Capital. The funding values the company at over $1 billion, marking it as the first unicorn in the FHE space.

The capital will accelerate mainnet deployment and expand ecosystem adoption of Zama's protocol, which enables developers to build encrypted dApps without DEEP cryptographic expertise. Potential use cases span confidential stablecoins, private identity verification, and secure computation for healthcare and defense sectors.

"Zama is commercializing technology that could redefine confidentiality in blockchain and cloud computing," said Ken Seiff of Blockchange Ventures. The funding coincides with the launch of Zama's public testnet, positioning FHE as critical infrastructure for privacy-sensitive Web3 applications.