Team8’s New Fund Backed By Walmart, Microsoft, Barclays Invests In Data Encryption Startup Duality

Duality Technologies, an Israeli startup focused on data encryption and data privacy, announced this week that it raised a $4 million funding round led by Team8, an Israeli cybersecurity think tank and company builder. Team8 recently launched an $85 million fund backed by Walmart, M-12, Microsoft’s venture-capital arm, Softbank, Scotiabank, Barclays, and others, to build cybersecurity and data companies over the next five years.

Duality was co-founded in 2016 by Turing Award winner Professor Shafi Goldwasser; MIT’s Prof. Vinod Vaikuntanathan, the co-inventor of the foundational BGV homomorphic encryption scheme, and Dr. Kurt Rohloff, founder of the PALISADE homomorphic encryption open source library. They co-founded Duality to transition nearly two decades of theoretical academic research to a market-ready technology resolving secure data collaboration challenges for businesses and consumers alike.

Duality’s technology enables advanced analysis of data while it remains encrypted – without exposing the raw data during the entire analytics pipeline. The company says this “unlocks endless possibilities for data collaboration between parties without relying on trust and enables the migration of sensitive data analysis to the cloud.”

Alongside the investment, Duality announced that it was launching The SecurePlus platform to allow organizations to analyze data without relinquishing data privacy.

“Enterprises large and small are facing enormous challenges around collaborating on their data while keeping it private. Duality finally has the answer, unlocking a whole new world of secure collaboration and business,” said Duality CEO Dr. Alon Kaufman. “With our breakthrough technology – pioneered by a dream team of founders and supported by Team8 – Duality is now allowing major data aggregators such as the big tech firms, healthcare providers, financial institutions and others to undertake secure collaboration with big data, while protecting the privacy of their customers and users. Firms can now safely ‘have their data and collaborate too.’”

Yuval Shachar, Executive Chairman of Team8 said “a company with a true ‘blue ocean’ technology and such a renowned founding team as Duality is exceedingly rare. It’s about time companies are able to collaborate on data without having to trust that others won’t misuse it. Duality’s breakthrough technology enables exactly that. This is a new era for business and security, and we’re excited to be part of it.”