Fabric Cryptography Raises $33 Million Series A to Develop Revolutionary Verifiable Processing Units for Cryptography

Fabric Cryptography, a startup focused on hardware, has raised $33 million in a Series A funding round. This round was co-led by Blockchain Capital and 1kx. Other investors included Offchain Labs, Polygon, and Matter Labs.

The company had previously raised $6 million in a seed round led by Metaplanet. Fabric was founded by Michael Gao and Tina Ju, who both dropped out of MIT and Stanford. They teamed up with hardware veterans like Sagar Reddy, as noted in a press release.

So, what will the new funds be used for? They aim to develop computing chips, software, and cryptographic algorithms. At the core of Fabric's plans is a new processing unit called the "verifiable processing unit," or VPU. This unit is designed specifically for handling cryptography.

As demand for high-performance computing rises—thanks to AI and blockchain applications—companies are creating new chips. Fabric states that the VPU is the first custom silicon chip using an instruction set architecture tailored for cryptography. This means any cryptographic algorithm can be broken down into its basic mathematical components, which the chip can accelerate and support.

Production of these new chips is set to begin later this year. Fabric claims that the VPUs will greatly enhance the speed and cost-effectiveness of running complex cryptographic tasks. They will outperform traditional CPUs, GPUs, and fixed-function cryptography. The company believes these chips will revolutionize cryptography, similar to how Nvidia’s GPUs and other startups’ chips are changing the AI landscape.