Malicious hacks are becoming more sophisticated, creating a very clear trend in security technology: security itself must continue to grow in complexity in order to keep people and organizations safe.
Security startup PQShield is an early player in the concept, focusing on “post-quantum” encryption — a future-proof software and hardware solution that would theoretically be able to withstand hacks performed using the most powerful quantum machines of the future.
Now the company has announced $37 million in funding to meet industry demand for building hardware and related systems based on its research.
Addition, Lee Fixel's investment firm, led the Series B along with other strategic and financial backers including Chevron Technology Ventures, Legal & General and Bravos Capital (all new investors) and previous backer Oxford Science Enterprises. Addition also led PQ Shield's Series A in 2022. (When asked, the startup did not disclose the valuation.)
Ali El Kaafarani, an Oxford mathematician who founded and leads the startup (also founded at Oxford), said the funding will be used to hire more people and work more closely with existing and new customers and partners. The list includes companies PQShield didn't name, such as AMD, Microchip Technologies, Collins Aerospace, Lattice Semiconductor, Sumitomo Electric, NTT Data, and Miraiz Technologies (Toyota/Denso R&D), and it also advises the White House, the European Parliament, the UK National Cybersecurity Council, and the World Economic Forum. The company also works with Nvidia, the biggest player in the chip industry, and now the entire technology industry.
“We still have the highest density of cryptographers in the industry, especially in the area of quantum cryptography,” he said in an interview. In addition, there are some interesting developments happening on the standardization front that will also have an impact on the evolution of the field.
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology has been working on an initiative to establish a standard for quantum cryptography for a decade, and it is expected to be released within the next few months, Dr. El Kaafarani said. “NIST published a draft in August last year, and we expect them to release an official standard in just a few weeks.”
One thing to watch will be the role that companies like PQShield play as technology and computing continue to evolve, and how leading companies adopt more advanced encryption to protect users' data at both the software and hardware layers.
A lot of the public discussion about encryption today centers around how it can be used to secure messaging platforms. (Notably, PQShield has provided its technology free of charge to the Signal Foundation, with whom it is “working on various research projects,” according to Dr. El Kaafarani.) And in the enterprise world, there's a lot of talk about how security systems can use encryption to protect both data transmitted or shared within a corporate network and data transmitted or shared outside of it.
The next step will be how we process data in AI environments, including not only AI applications but also model training (and, of course, how we protect that data in a world where malicious hackers are using AI to get past all protections).
As an example, Apple is taking a new approach to handling privacy in AI computing, called private cloud computing, which the company says enables “private AI processing” by more tightly integrating a private cloud with custom silicon on the device.
“AI will be another reason why we need to modernize our cryptography,” said Dr. El Kaafarani. “I believe that whether it's Apple or other companies, they will start using post-quantum cryptography for their AI very soon, because they will have to change to the new standard and not go through classical cryptography.”
PQShield develops its solutions in three forms: systems-on-chips designed to sit on hardware like smart cards or processors, software via cryptographic SDKs that can be integrated into mobile and server apps and the technology used to process data and perform security operations, and toolkits for telecommunications companies designed specifically to secure messaging services. PQShield has an interesting perspective as it moves out of the pure deep tech realm and into more commercially viable tools, which is likely one of the reasons investors like Addition are particularly interested in it at a time when computing and chips seem to be evolving rapidly.