Oblivious AI, an Irish data privacy start-up, has secured $1.05 million (€900k) in an initial seed funding round.
Oblivious AI has developed Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) to help organisations keep sensitive data safe while creating insight opportunities for the data owners.
Investors in the round include Atlantic Bridge, Act Venture Capital, Hustle Fund and a group of angel investors.
The NovaUCD-headquartered company, which was co-founded in 2020 by Robert Pisarczyk and Jack Fitzsimons, will use the funding to build out its core team, further develop its initial product offering, and continue to work closely with its early customer base.
The company, which currently has a team of eight, aims to launch its technology to developers globally by the end of 2021.
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PETs allow companies, governments and international organisations to process data without having direct access to the underlying sensitive information, reducing risk from cyberattacks while also creating new insight opportunities for data owners.
Robert Pisarczyk, CEO and co-founder of Oblivious AI, said: “A 2015 study by consulting firm McKinsey suggested that only 1% of the world’s data is analysed and used for collaborative purposes. PETs provide a phenomenal opportunity to unlock the potential of these vast reserves of unused data."
Conor O’Sullivan, Investment Director of Atlantic Bridge also commented: “Privacy enhancing technologies are fundamental to the next generation of data analytics, including enabling secure data collaboration between parties. The team at Oblivious are developing novel and differentiated tools for developers to take advantage of the state of the art in confidential sharing of information between organisations.”
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The Oblivious team collectively brings together a wealth of experience in data privacy, security and machine learning. As they build their core products, they have collaborated with the likes of the United Nations, the University of Oxford and ETH Zurich.
Source: Written from press release.
