Post-quantum cryptography startup PQShield Ltd. today announced that it has closed a $37 million funding round led by Addition.

Chevron Technology Ventures, Legal & General, Braavos Capital and Oxford Science Enterprises contributed as well. The Series B investment brings PQShield’s total outside funding to more than $57 million.

“We’re already getting our technology into the hands of customers across the supply chain, and today’s funding will enable us to deliver real-world, post-quantum hardware and software upgrades to even more organizations as they move to comply with new global standards,” said PQShield founder and Chief Executive Officer Ali El Kaafarani.

Today’s encryption algorithms work by hiding data behind complex math problems that are too difficult for even the most advanced supercomputers. Because hackers can’t solve those math problems, they can’t encrypt encrypted data. But that might change in the future if large-scale quantum computers become a reality.

It’s believed that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer would be capable of breaking today’s most advanced encryption software. To address that risk, researchers have developed a new generation of so-called post-quantum cryptography algorithms. Those algorithms are designed to fend off decryption attempts by tomorrow’s large-scale quantum machines.

London-based PQShield offers software tools for implementing post-quantum cryptography. The company also provides chip modules optimized to run its software. PQShield’s technology can be used to power products such as HSMs, or hardware security modules, devices that data center operators use to store sensitive information.

The company’s software portfolio is headlined by a collection of post-quantum cryptography algorithms called PQCryptoLib. It’s available on a standalone basis and as part of a development tool, PQSDK, that also includes conventional encryption algorithms. The latter product is designed to ease the task of integrating PQShield’s software with enterprise applications.

The company offers its algorithms alongside a collection of chips optimized to perform post-quantum encryption. PQShield’s first chip, CoPro, can be managed by the central processing unit of the device in which it’s installed. The company also offers SubSys, an implementation of CoPro powered by its own dedicated CPU rather than the host system’s processor.

The company says that the two modules are designed to withstand side-channel attacks. Those are cyberattacks in which hackers analyze technical details about a chip, such as the amount of power it consumes, to reconstruct the information it processes. This technique can be used to steal sensitive data such as encryption keys.

PQShield offers CoPro and PQShield alongside a number of other hardware products. One of them, Lattice, is a module for implementing post-quantum cryptography in devices such as network security appliances that process large amounts of data. Another product dubbed Hash can be used to carry out hashing, a type of computing operation that is part of many common cybersecurity tasks.

PQShield detailed on occasion of today’s funding announcement that its technology is already used by several enterprise customers. Chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Microchip Technologies Inc. and Lattice Semiconductor Corp. are among those companies. PQShield also has multiple customers beyond the semiconductor industry. 

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