Decentriq raises USD 15million to enable secure and compliant data collaboration for every organization via data clean rooms

22.03.2022 14:30, Guillaume Tinsel

Decentriq, a Swiss enterprise SaaS platform providing the most secure and compliant data clean rooms, announced a USD 15 million Series A funding round led by Eclipse Ventures, with participation from existing investors Atlantic Labs, btov Partners, and Paladin Capital Group. We interviewed Decentriq co-founder and CEO Maximilian Groth to learn more.

Powered by encryption in-use technology called confidential computing, Decentriq’s data clean rooms ensure that no one but the data owner can access their raw data uploaded onto the platform – not other participants, Decentriq nor the cloud provider. This ensures that the data owner remains in full control of their data and thus completely preserving data privacy and adhering to the strictest regulatory standards such as GDPR.

Since 2021, Decentriq has been supporting pharmaceutical companies to access hospital data in Switzerland and Belgium in a secure and GDPR compliant manner, while 20 of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world have been collaborating in a Decentriq data clean room to perform benchmarking on themselves. 

Decentriq is also enabling advertisers and publishers to combine their first-party data to build and activate precise audiences in a cookie-less world. Further, Decentriq’s data clean rooms have been enabling banks to update their mailing list with up-to-date addresses found in the postal companies’ database.

Decentriq will use the investment to further accelerate the development and commercialization of its data clean rooms based on AI, state-of-the-art encryption, and privacy-enhancing technologies (PET).



The funding will also be used to expand the types of analytical tools available on the platform, such as Python, R, and machine learning, as well as PET features like synthetic data and differential privacy, capture growing demand for secure data collaboration in new and existing markets, and grow its team across key markets in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the US. 

This latest investment comes just over a year after a USD 3.8 million seed funding round in November 2020. Since then, Decentriq has started working with new customers in the private and public sector, such as the Swiss Army and Mobiliar Insurance.

“We’re proud of the Decentriq platform that our incredible team has been building for the past year,” said Maximilian Groth, CEO of Decentriq. “Our data clean rooms enable companies to collaborate on the most restricted and sensitive data in a secure and GDPR compliant manner to unlock new value and deeper insights.”

“From improving patient outcomes to leveraging first-party data for precise audience activation, we strongly believe our platform has the potential to revolutionize almost every industry and empower many more companies to unlock new value from their sensitive data with the highest levels of data privacy and security guarantees,” added Groth. “Our data clean rooms have already made a positive impact in key industries, such as healthcare, advertising, and financial services.”

Maximilian, how will the USD 15 million investment led by Eclipse Ventures help achieve your vision?
It provides us with the required funding to scale the team in order to meet the fast-growing customers' demand. In addition, Eclipse Ventures is based in Silicon Valley which gives us access to a world-class network. 

You also participated in Venture Leaders Technology in 2021, Venture Leaders Mobile 2020, and were selected on the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award the same year. How did it leverage your fundraising strategy? 
We actually met Eclipse Ventures during the Venture Leaders Technology trip in Silicon Valley in 2021. The TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award is a great event to grow our international visibility and recognition to investors.

When, and what, was your inspiration to found Decentriq?
My co-founder Stefan Deml and I have been working in the field of sensitive data and monetization for almost 10 years. Through our previous roles, we identified a clear market need for enterprises to share and combine their data sets, to enable collaboration and innovation. The advantages that could be gained for all parties in the ability to more freely share data are self-evident, but there was no solution at the time for how this could be done safely, without breaching data privacy regulations or putting sensitive information at risk. 

What is your advice for the potential software/SaaS entrepreneurs launching companies in Switzerland today?
Switzerland is geographically a small country, but we have a high density of larger corporations, which helps in doing business as an enterprise software company.

Part One Source: Press Release Decentriq. Interview led by Venturelab.