NovaUCD: Privacy tech spin-in raises €5.35m for secure use of confidential data

18 April 2023

A start-up headquartered at NovaUCD aiming to enforce data confidentiality has raised €5.35 million during its latest round of seed funding.

Oblivious is developing systems to allow users access to the world's most sensitive data while ensuring it can only be used for its intended purpose.

Pitching itself as a “confidential computing” company looking to “change the way we broker trust between the data scientist and data owners”, the start-up is building tools to allow data scientists and machine learning models to work on data without compromising its confidentiality.

“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,” said Robert Pisarczyk, founder and CEO, 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’”.

Founded in 2020 by Robert Pisarczyk and Jack Fitzsimons, who both have Oxford PhDs and extensive backgrounds in computer engineering, data science, machine learning and cryptography, 

An Enterprise Ireland and an ESA BIC Ireland client company, Oblivious was founded in 2020 by Robert Pisarczyk and Jack Fitzsimons, who both have Oxford PhDs and extensive backgrounds in computer engineering, data science, machine learning and cryptography.

The company currently has a staff of 13, and intends to create seven new jobs in the near future.

“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,” said Robert Pisarczyk.

“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.”

The seed round was led by Cavalry Ventures, a Berlin-based early-stage VC fund, which 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.

Source: NovaUCD