Niobium Microsystems

Niobium Microsystems is a specialized semiconductor firm focused on developing hardware for Zero Trust Computing. The company spun out of Galois, a cryptography and privacy technology firm, in July 2021, building on decades of research and development in high-assurance systems for commercial and federal markets. The leadership team includes President & CEO Kevin Yoder, who previously worked at Lantronix, and founder Robert Wiltbank. Based in Dayton, Ohio, Niobium also has a presence in other U.S. cities.

The core of Niobium's business is the production of hardware accelerators for fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). FHE is a technology that allows for computation on encrypted data, ensuring the information remains private even while being processed. This capability addresses a significant challenge in data security, enabling applications in sectors that handle sensitive information, such as healthcare, finance, and defense. The company’s flagship product is a custom PCIe card, a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) that can be integrated into existing cloud servers to dramatically increase the performance of FHE software. By making encrypted computation more practical and efficient, Niobium aims to facilitate new uses for machine learning and statistical analysis where data privacy is a mathematical guarantee.

Niobium's business model centers on providing these custom silicon solutions to clients requiring absolute data privacy, including cloud service providers and enterprises in regulated industries. The company has received funding from government programs and venture capital. A significant seed funding round of $5.5 million was announced in May 2024, led by Fusion Fund, with participation from Morgan Creek Capital, Rev1 Ventures, and others. This capital is intended to advance the commercialization of its FHE accelerator chip, expand its team, and explore new applications in areas like financial fraud detection and pharmaceutical research.

Keywords: Fully Homomorphic Encryption, FHE accelerator, Zero Trust Computing, data privacy, secure computation, hardware acceleration, System-on-a-Chip, SoC, microelectronics, cryptography, custom silicon, data security, encrypted computation, secure microelectronics, confidential computing, information security, semiconductor, privacy-preserving technology, data protection, cybersecurity hardware