Silence Laboratories, a startup that specializes in building infrastructure using multiparty computation (MPC), announced a $4.1 million funding round. The funding was co-led by Pi Ventures and Kira Studio, with additional support from angel investors, bringing the total raised to $6 million. This investment will aid in scaling the team and expanding the R&D pipeline.
MPC, a subset of cryptography, is at the core of Silence’s infrastructure. It allows for secure collaboration between multiple parties without disclosing sensitive data to anyone else. The startup was founded in 2021 by CEO Dr. Jay Prakash, CTO Dr. Andrei Bytes, and Dr. Tony Quek. It is a spinoff of over a decade’s worth of research and development in applied cryptography and application security. Originally focused on multifactor authentication (MFA), the team pivoted to creating a cryptographic security firm.
Prakash explains the company’s journey, stating, “We found a product-market fit (PMF) in privacy-preserving decentralized authorization and computation while talking to early customers who were building digital asset-based products. Since then, we have been building cryptographic libraries to solve the critical problem of a single point of failure and exposure of secrets, both at rest and in use.”
In today’s world, concerns over data privacy are on the rise and regulators are increasing data privacy requirements. This puts the responsibility on large corporations to effectively manage the data they collect and safeguard users’ data from hackers. Prakash adds, “Credit scoring, financial risk analysis, and tracking money laundering all rely on data being dumped in one location for processing. This puts the processing entity at great risk and liability, ultimately discouraging collaborations. Studies have shown that by guaranteeing privacy, richer collaborations are possible, leading to improved data quality and analysis.”
Products and Users
Silence, which has been operating for three years, offers two products utilizing MPC technology: Silent Shard and Silent Compute. Silent Shard, audited by security company Trail of Bits, allows enterprises and users to limit the risk of exposing sensitive private keys while implementing advanced authorization rules. The company recently released Silent Compute, which enables corporations to collaborate on processing information without revealing their own private data to third parties. This helps companies gain valuable insights while maintaining compliance and trust.
The startup operates under a B2B licensing model, offering libraries with a suite of features and wrappers for platform and application-agnostic packages. According to Prakash, their primary customers are digital asset enterprises, financial and healthcare organizations, and telecommunication companies. Over 20 enterprise customers are already using Silence’s products, including BitGo, MetaMask, and EigenLayer, which recently raised $100 million from Andreessen Horowitz. Prakash also mentioned upcoming partnerships in the financial, anti-money laundering, and healthcare sectors.
Silence currently generates $500,000 in annual recurring revenue, with pricing based on the number of accounts protected and features supported. Prakash explains, “The pricing varies based on the category of the customer. Large enterprises require niche features, medium-scale businesses have different needs, and early-stage companies need early support.”
In the last two years, several larger crypto companies have acquired smaller firms specializing in MPC capabilities. In November 2021, Coinbase acquired Unbound Security, a crypto custody infrastructure firm. In July 2022, Blockdaemon acquired Sepior, a digital asset security company offering key management services to institutional clients. The market size for privacy-enhancing technology, such as MPC, is projected to reach $25.8 billion by 2033, a significant increase from $2.4 billion in 2023.
Expert Perspective
Anurag Arjun, founding partner of Kira Studio and former co-founder of Polygon, shares his thoughts on the company’s potential, stating, “With deep cryptography expertise, [The Silence team] is working on a set of groundbreaking products in privacy and authentication infrastructure. The combination of privacy-preserving infrastructure with blockchain and fintech rails is going to be huge.”
