UK optical hardware firm raises £21 million for encryption

News | July 17, 2023

By Peter Clarke

Optoelectronics Authentication & Encryption

Optalysys Ltd. (Leeds, England) has raised £21 million (about US$27.5 million) in a Series A round of finance to be used to apply its photonic computing technology to fully homomorphic encryption (FHE).

The money is being provided by investment firms Lingotto, imec.xpand, and Northern Gritstone and will also be used to expand the company’s team in England, Europe and the US.

FHE is a form of encryption that does not require data to be decrypted before it can be processed. This makes the outsourcing of storage and computation to the cloud more secure and FHE is said not to be susceptible to quantum computing attacks. However, FHE comes with a high computational burden that has prevented it being deployed at scale on conventional processors.

FHE optimized computation is already being pursued by such companies as Chain Reaction Ltd. (see Blockchain chip startup Chain Reaction raises $70 million), Niobium Microsystems Inc. (see Fully homomorphic encryption startup joins Silicon Catalyst) and Cornami Inc. (see Encryption processor firm Cornami attracts Applied Ventures).

Optical chiplet

Whereas those companies are pursuing an electronic approach to FHE Optalysys is looking to apply photonic computation.

Optalysys claims its approach allows encrypted data to be processed at similar speeds to data in the raw opening up the possibility of deploying FHE at scale.

Optalysys’ vision is for a hybrid photonic-electronic chiplet-based component that combines optical modulation in waveguides with free-space optical transmission to produce highly parallel near-instantaneous transformation of data.

Optalysys Ltd was founded in 2013 by CEO Nick New and CTO Robert Todd and the company intends to launch its technology using a cloud-based service model. Initial photonic systems developed by Optalysys will also be made available to end-users via an Accelerator program. The first optical processing ‘Enable’ chips are scheduled to be made within 24 months.

“Our Enable technology allows us to turbo boost the workflows and address the underlying bottlenecks that hold FHE back,” said New in a statement/ “We have turned optical computing on its head. What’s more, FHE is just the starting point for where our technology can go.”