Austria's SaaS startup TACEO enables secure, verifiable collaboration on encrypted data without revealing the underlying information, has raised $5.5 million led by Archetype VC.
- Launched in 2022 by Daniel Kales and Lukas Helminger, TACEO is building infrastructure for secure, verifiable collaboration on encrypted data.
- The startup develops a cryptographic compute network that allows multiple parties to jointly compute over sensitive datasets without revealing the underlying information.
- At the core of TACEO’s system is a new cryptographic technique called coSNARKs, which combines Multiparty Computation (MPC) and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZK) to ensure both privacy and correctness.
- This enables what TACEO calls a "Private Shared State", a data environment where facts can be proven without disclosing inputs. Applications span from decentralized finance and identity verification to AI, where systems can make decisions based on private data without accessing it directly.
- TACEO’s tools are already in use, notably powering biometric verification for over 14 million users in collaboration with World (formerly Worldcoin), marking the largest known deployment of encrypted compute infrastructure to date.
Details of the deal
- The investors in TACEO’s $5.5 million seed round include lead investor Archetype VC, along with a16z CSX, Cyber.Fund, A.Capital Ventures, Polymorphic Capital, and several prominent angel investors.
"TACEO is at the forefront of building programmable privacy into the Web3 compute stack, and we have had massive conviction in Lukas and the team since we first met, following Lukas's presentation on coSNARKs at Archetype HQ," claims Ash Egan, founder and General Partner at Archetype.
- TACEO will use the $5.5 million seed funding to grow its team and scale its Private Shared State infrastructure, expanding beyond crypto into sectors like AI, identity, and finance, where secure data collaboration is essential.
