Cavalry x Oblivious
Confidential Computing for the Age of AI
Over the last two decades, users put immense trust in software companies that offer convenient services. However, few and far between know what actually happens when a request — such as a query to Google Translate — is made and where fragments of personal data eventually end up. Legislators have tried to push legal compliance to manage this, standards bodies have pushed certification, but only now in the age of confidential computing can the physical chips and underlying cloud providers prove how data is used.
Our new portfolio company Oblivious focuses on changing the way users broker trust in the data economy. Their 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.
Setting up guardrails to ensure data sovereignty and confidentiality
Oblivious was founded by Robert Pisarczyk and Jack Fitzsimons, both Oxford PhDs with an extensive background in computer engineering, data science, machine learning and cryptography. The two founders knocked heads at a fortuitous time. Jack had seen too many projects red-flagged and completely scrapped due to data access issues or data scientists being given access to too sensitive information that they did not really need for their tasks. Robert knew that many such challenges can be tackled with privacy enhancing technologies. Together, they wanted to make it straightforward to integrate privacy tooling into the workflow of any data scientist and developer.
Oblivious has just raised €5.35 million to change the way we broker trust between the data scientist and data owners. We at Cavalry were happy to lead the round. Additionally, we were 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.
Congratulations to the Oblivious team and all parties involved!
The co-founders of Oblivious, Robert Pisarczyk and Jack Fitzsimons, joined Cavalry’s Claude Ritter and Fabian Krautwurst for a brief chat about data privacy and security:
