Cosmian raises €4.2 million to accelerate the distribution of its products

Cosmian, the French deeptech specialized in cryptography and encryption technologies, announced a €4.2 million fundraising.

This new round is made with 115K, the new innovation fund of La Banque Postale dedicated to FinTech, AssurTech and Cybersecurity start-ups, as well as Elaia Partners, one of the main European investment funds specialized in deeptech.

Elaia Partners had already invested at Cosmian’s inception in a €1.4m early-stage financing alongside Guillaume Amblard (CEO of Amblard Ventures) and the family holding company Fiblac, who are also participating in the new round.

Ubiquitous Encryption to secure privacy by default

Having built the technologies necessary to protect data and algorithms in use in the cloud, Cosmian is now able to provide an unprecedented advance in the security and privacy of data in use.

The French deeptech now allows companies to secure the use of sensitive data and applications without ever compromising the security and privacy of the data used, including in the cloud. The data is kept encrypted even during its use and includes access rights. In other words, with its Ubiquitous Encryption approach, Cosmian offers to protect sensitive data and confidential calculations everywhere and all the time.

Founded by two French engineers, Sandrine Murcia and Bruno Grieder, Cosmian works in close collaboration with leading European laboratories and is advised by David Pointcheval, CNRS 2021 silver medalist, and Professor Nigel Smart, who heads the COSIC (Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography) research group at KU Leuven University.

Cosmian has twenty employees, including researchers and developers of excellence in cryptography. The company has also established technological partnerships with key players such as Intel and Denodo.

“Today, as the web has evolved from http to https, there is no longer a reason why data should not be systematically encrypted and therefore better protected. Moreover, as the cloud has become the infrastructure of choice for critical applications of large groups and unicorns of the new economy, the demand for security and confidentiality is stronger than ever. The objective is clear: that the cloud learns nothing, neither of the data nor of its use” explains Bruno Grieder, CTO and co-founder of Cosmian.

Since its inception, Cosmian’s ambition has been to develop encryption technologies that are easy to deploy and use in companies. To democratize their use, Cosmian is launching the first public Secure Computation platform for IT & Cybersecurity departments as well as for developers and data engineers.

Cosmian Secure Computation allows the following critical cases to be performed securely and confidentially:

• My company offers SaaS solutions. My customers no longer want to send me their data in clear text. How can I continue to operate my services?
• My company has developed proprietary algorithms. How do I keep my algorithm confidential when it runs on my clients’ sensitive data?
• My company needs to cross-reference data with other partner companies (joint customers, etc.) but no one is prepared to give direct access to their databases in clear text.

Our Ubiquitous Encryption solutions have been validated by our first customers in the financial services, healthcare, energy and defence sectors. Our offering is unique: we provide state-of-the-art advanced cryptography in the form of easy-to-use, decentralized developer tools. This new round of funding aims to increase our development capacity and to increase our traction in the market, with critical applications that are mostly deployed by unicorns” adds Sandrine Murcia, CEO & Co-founder of Cosmian.