Confidential computing start-up Oblivious has raised €5.35m in funding to change the way trust is brokered between the data scientist and data owners.
Oblivious, which is headquartered at NovaUCD in Dublin, was founded in 2020 by Robert Pisarczyk and Jack Fitzsimons.
Both men are Oxford PhDs with extensive backgrounds in computer engineering, data science, machine learning and cryptography.
An Enterprise Ireland and an ESA BIC Ireland client company, the company currently has a staff of 13, and intends to create seveb new jobs over the near future.
The seed round was led by Cavalry Ventures, a Berlin-based early-stage VC fund.
It was joined by a range of supporting European and US-based VCs and angels including, Act VC, Atlantic Bridge, Firestreak Ventures, Expeditions Fund and Hustle Fund.
"Collectively, the tech industry has put hundreds of billions into building robust data lakes and advanced data science tooling, but standard role-based access control still remains untouched since the '80s," commented Robert Pisarczyk, founder and CEO of Oblivious.
"We focus on building tools that allow data scientists to access and use the world's most impactful data while ensuring it is used for its intended purpose, and we call it 'Eyes-Off Data Science'," he added.
Oblivious focuses on changing the way users broker trust in the data economy.
Its team of engineers, security architects and product designers are focused on building the tools to allow API providers to work on sensitive data while enforcing confidentiality constraints and brokering trust between organizations.
"Put yourself in the shoes of Uber, Airbnb or any modern tech-enabled company. You can't simply hand your data scientist the keys to customer data. Like with any powerful resource it could be used for great good or great evil," Robert Pisarczyk said
"We believe that by restricting how data is used, through modern privacy enhancing technologies, we can open the doors to the next wave of data innovations while providing the safety rails to ensure its only used for good," he added.
