TACEO, a startup building infrastructure for secure computation on encrypted data, has raised USD 5.5 million in a seed funding round.
The round was led by Archetype VC with participation from a16z CSX, Cyber.Fund, A.Capital Ventures, Polymorphic Capital, and a number of prominent angel investors. The funds will be utilised to grow Private Shared State, a data model that allows multiple parties to collaborate on sensitive information without exposing it to risk or the need for centralised trust. The software is driven by a cryptographic tool called coSNARKs, which protects data during multiparty computation and proves outcomes with zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs.
Improving encrypted data solutions
TACEO was formed in 2022 and makes its technology commercially available through its partnership with World, formerly WorldCoin. The startup creates software for the company’s iris matching verification service, used to access the World network, making sure that users’ data remains fully encrypted. Other projects from TACEO include the design of the Poseidon hash function, a de facto standard in zero-knowledge systems, and a COVID-19 infection tracking system.
The impact of this software extends beyond blockchain, enabling AI Large Language Models (LLMs) and autonomous agents to verify facts and make decisions without accessing personal and proprietary data. This aims to increase privacy, optimise AI, and strengthen security.
DeFi currently struggles with the balance between privacy and transparency, and this is why institutions rely on public blockchains that expose sensitive data, or build their own infrastructure, which can be a complex process incompatible with the broader web. TACEO aims to tackle this challenge by allowing payment providers to verify transactions and identities while remaining compliant across decentralised networks, without exposing sensitive data.
The startup believes that the ability to instantly verify encrypted information without revealing the data is essential to achieving transparency and control in the AI era. The funding will help it support the development of its solution, scale its technology, and solve what it believes is one of the internet’s biggest problems.
