Why we invested in Ingonyama, revolutionizing zero-knowledge proofs for mass adoption
It is well established that Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) have immense potential, particularly in enabling verification and authentication while preserving privacy. This can enable secure and private financial transactions on blockchains but can also be applied to a myriad of other use cases such as confidential voting in elections, selective disclosure of personal information for verification in fraud prevention, authentication in passwordless logins or privacy preservation of sensitive data like medical records. But its adoption has yet to take off in part due to the mathematical complexity and computational costs associated with the practice.
Enter Ingonyama with its broad, multidisciplinary approach and deep understanding of the ZK landscape to find and solve computational bottlenecks in ZKPs in order to address and solve these issues. Ingonyama’s journey began with a vision to create a robust foundation for applications demanding exceptional ZK performance. With a focus on speed, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, the team at Ingonyama has assembled a group of experts dedicated to democratizing the use of ZKPs. The result is ICICLE, a CUDA-based GPU library that not only offers easy onboarding and full support, but also provides free GPU access to foster innovation.
The ZKP generation market alone is projected to reach $10 billion by 2030. Enabled markets, such as crypto mining and Full Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), are also on the rise, presenting a significant market potential for Ingonyama. In this context, GPUs emerge as a crucial component for ZK computation—not unlike the role they play in the advancement of AI. With approximately 97% of ZK protocol runtime inherently parallel, GPUs prove to be an ideal match, offering simplicity for developers, scalability compared to other hardware platforms, competitive power/performance at a significantly lower cost, and widespread availability. The synergy between ZKPs and GPUs underscores the potential for efficient and accessible implementation, further propelling the transformative impact of zero-knowledge cryptography.
Ingonyama’s success is driven by a dedicated team of experts, including Omer Shlomovits (Co-Founder & CEO), Michael Asa (Co-Founder & CTO), and Danny Shterman (Co-Founder & VP R&D). Their collective expertise and background in cryptography, FPGA/ASIC design, and industry experience contribute to the success of ICICLE. We continue to be interested in the potential for ZKPs to become a practical security standard that can be extended to mobile devices and are proud to invest in Ingonyama alongside investors including Geometry, Blue Yard, Walden Catalyst, and IOSG, among others. We’re excited to see how Ingonyama will continue to improve the performance of ZK Provers by designing hardware optimized for ZK computation.
Royi Benyossef is an investor at Samsung Next. Samsung Next’s investment strategy is limited to its own views and does not reflect the vision or strategy of any other Samsung business unit, including, but not limited to, Samsung Electronics.