SEOUL, South Korea and DAYTON, Ohio, Oct. 10, 2024 / — CryptoLab and Niobium have announced a strategic partnership aimed at revolutionizing privacy and performance in Large Language Models (LLM) and Generative AI (GenAI). This collaboration targets creating real-time encrypted GenAI, protecting sensitive user data and ushering in a new era of secure, privacy-centric AI.
By integrating CryptoLab’s industry-leading homomorphic encryption software with Niobium’s state-of-the-art Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) acceleration hardware, the partnership aims to address one of AI’s most critical challenges: ensuring data privacy without compromising speed or functionality. Encrypted GenAI allows user queries and responses to remain encrypted even during computation: Inputs are unreadable as plain text even to the AI model itself, so user privacy is mathematically guaranteed at the quantum level.
The partnership between CryptoLab and Niobium will yield numerous industry benefits, including:
- Innovative FHE Acceleration: Combining Niobium’s cutting-edge FHE accelerator hardware with CryptoLab’s patented advanced HEaaN CKKS technology will dramatically speed up homomorphic encryption operations, paving the way for practical, real-world applications of privacy-preserving AI. Joint efforts will lead to fully encrypted GenAI/LLM inferencing at speeds comparable to unencrypted operations, eliminating the traditional trade-off between privacy and performance.
- Quantum-Resistant Security: Leveraging CryptoLab’s expertise in post-quantum cryptography, this partnership creates a formidable defense against both current and future cyber threats, including those from quantum computing.
- Scalable Privacy Solutions: The joint effort is focused on delivering turnkey privacy-preserving computation solutions, making advanced FHE technology accessible to businesses of all sizes. Private GenAI will drive breakthroughs across various sectors—from enabling secure, real-time analysis of sensitive healthcare data to transforming privacy standards in financial modeling and beyond.
- Global Standardization Leadership: CryptoLab and Niobium will lead efforts to establish new global standards for privacy-preserving AI, positioning themselves at the forefront of the Private AI movement.
Niobium and CryptoLab share a vision of a private and secure world enabled by FHE. This partnership is the first step to accelerate this vision while demonstrating unwavering commitment to innovation and the groundbreaking practical applications of FHE at scale.
Leadership Perspectives
“This partnership represents a quantum leap for Private AI,” stated Jung Hee Cheon, CEO of CryptoLab. “By collaborating with Niobium, we’re not just pushing the boundaries—we’re redefining the very foundations of secure, privacy-first artificial intelligence.”
Kevin Yoder, CEO of Niobium, added, “The synergy between our FHE acceleration technology and CryptoLab’s advanced software paves the way for a new era of data utilization. We’re not only safeguarding privacy but also unlocking the full potential of data in a secure environment.”
About CryptoLab
CryptoLab (www.cryptolab.co.kr) is at the forefront of fully homomorphic encryption technology. We hold the original patent for the widely used CKKS scheme. Through continuous investment in refining CKKS and breakthroughs in key algorithms, CryptoLab made encrypted LLM and GenAI possible – applications previously considered beyond the reach of fully homomorphic encryption. CryptoLab is headquartered in Seoul, Korea, with offices in Lyon, France, and San Jose, California.
About Niobium
Niobium is blazing a new path for the data economy by developing custom hardware solutions for Zero Trust Computing. Niobium is pioneering the first dedicated hardware capable of advancing fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) into commercial applications. This technology keeps data encrypted even during computation, enabling a new class of multi-party machine learning and statistical analysis applications with mathematically guaranteed privacy. Niobium is headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, and has offices in Columbus, Ohio, Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, California. More information is available at niobiummicro.com.