Oasis Labs raises $45 million for ‘privacy first’ cloud on blockchain

Oasis Labs has raised $45 million to build a “privacy-first” cloud computing platform with blockchain technology.

Berkeley, California-based Oasis Labs is designing a platform to overcome the performance, security, and privacy limitations that have hampered blockchain adoption to date. The aim is to make blockchain, a distributed secure ledger that powers cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, more useful to a broader set of companies.

“Blockchains are poised to revolutionize much of the way we live, but many developers and organizations have understandable concerns about performance and privacy limitations that are currently hindering their ability to embrace the technology,” said Oasis Labs CEO Dawn Song, in a statement. “The Oasis platform aims to give users control over their data, and at the same time deliver superior performance and privacy capabilities. Our goal is to build the scalable and secure decentralized internet that puts users first.”

The first funding round included a16z crypto, Accel, Binance DCVC (Data Collective), Electric Capital, Foundation Capital, Metastable, Pantera, Polychain, and others.

“Today’s internet is experiencing significant growing pains when it comes to providing effective security and privacy protections, which is only compounded by the rise of data-intensive services like AI,” said Accel partner Jake Flomenberg, in a statement. “At the same time, however, the opportunity has never been greater to responsibly leverage data in the web’s next phase of products and innovation. Oasis Labs is forging a new path by giving people control over their data while delivering a high-performance blockchain platform that will reshape the future of the cloud.”

To power those applications, the Oasis platform embodies two core ideas.

The first is bringing privacy and security protections previously not possible on a blockchain. The second is delivering processing capabilities with much greater performance than existing systems, even for complex applications.

This combination could enable sophisticated, computationally intensive, and privacy-sensitive services, such as machine learning on the blockchain, the company said.

“It’s exciting to see talented people like Dawn and her team working on ways to transition the internet away from data silos and toward a world with more responsible ways to share and own your data,” said Fred Ehrsam, cofounder of Coinbase and Oasis Labs investor, in a statement.

Starting today, Oasis Labs is asking developers to apply for access to its private testnet.

“Our team has been hard at work building the platform for blockchain’s most meaningful applications,” said Oasis Labs cofounder and CTO Raymond Cheng. “The next step is getting our product in the hands of developers who align with our mission and can help inform the evolution of the platform as they build applications upon it. We can’t wait to show them what we’ve been up to.”

Oasis Labs’ leaders have played pivotal roles in a number of open source projects in the areas of secure and privacy-preserving computing, including the open source differential privacy project with Uber and the open source keystone project (in collaboration with research groups at MIT and UC Berkeley) to develop open source secure hardware.

Oasis Labs was founded in 2018 and has 20 employees.