Keybase

About Keybase

Keybase is a technology company that developed a secure messaging and file-sharing platform grounded in public-key cryptography. The firm was established in 2014 by co-founders Chris Coyne and Max Krohn and is headquartered in New York. This venture marked their third major collaboration, following the successful creation and subsequent sale of SparkNotes, a study guide website acquired by Barnes & Noble in 2001, and the dating platform OkCupid, sold to Match.com for $50 million. Their collective experience in building large-scale, consumer-facing applications informed Keybase's development, with Krohn's expertise in scalable and secure systems being a core component.

The company's mission was to make complex cryptography accessible to everyday users. The platform provides a suite of tools including end-to-end encrypted chat, cloud storage via the Keybase Filesystem (KBFS), secure Git repositories, and team collaboration features. A central feature is its public key directory, which allows users to map their online identities from services like Twitter, GitHub, and Reddit to their encryption keys, creating a publicly verifiable link. This system was designed to provide a higher level of trust and verification when communicating or sharing files. The service is available through client applications for most major desktop and mobile operating systems.

Initially, Keybase operated without a defined revenue model, functioning more as a passion project for its founders. The company secured $10.8 million in a Series A funding round in 2015 from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Corazon Capital. It was also supported financially by the Stellar Foundation to integrate a Stellar wallet into the platform. While plans to introduce paid tiers for increased storage were considered, the platform remained free for users, offering a generous 250 GB of encrypted storage. On May 7, 2020, Keybase was acquired by Zoom Video Communications. The acquisition was a strategic move for Zoom to integrate Keybase's engineering team and encryption expertise to bolster the security of its own video communications platform. Following the acquisition, Max Krohn was appointed to lead Zoom's security engineering team.