What Niobium Microsystems does

Niobium Microsystems is a Dayton, Ohio-based semiconductor and cloud infrastructure company spun out of Galois Inc. that builds hardware and software for fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). Its core technology enables computation directly on encrypted data without decryption, which the company positions as addressing the fundamental security gap in cloud computing where data typically must be decrypted before processing. The company's product stack is anchored by The Fog, the first Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform purpose-built for FHE, which is powered by a proprietary mistic Core processor architecture and complemented by a custom FHE Accelerator ASIC. The first-generation FHE chip completed tape-out at Global Foundries' US 12nm low power fab, and a second-generation ASIC is being manufactured on Samsung Foundry's 8nm Low Power Ultimate process through a design partnership with SEMIFIVE valued at approximately $6.86 million.

The company monetizes through two distinct revenue streams: usage-based access to The Fog encrypted cloud platform, and hardware sales of its FHE accelerator ASIC targeting hyperscalers and AI infrastructure providers. Pricing is not publicly disclosed, and The Fog is currently in private beta with broader public availability targeted for late Q2 2026, with a Developer Partner Program opened in June 2026 providing SDKs, pre-built FHE applications, and dedicated accelerator access. Target customer segments are primarily enterprise buyers in life sciences and healthcare, financial services, security and defense, and AI infrastructure, with secondary interest in blockchain and federated learning applications.

Niobium has raised approximately $33 million across funding rounds from 2021 to 2025, with the most recent $23 million+ round led by Blockchange Ventures in December 2025. The company operates with 51-100 employees and has assembled senior leadership including a CEO (Kevin Yoder), Chief Scientist (Luke Duncan), and recently hired VP of Product from Groq and VP of Finance from Celestial AI. Its go-to-market combines a product-led developer adoption motion with enterprise field sales targeting hyperscaler and AI infrastructure accounts via its SEMIFIVE/Samsung Foundry manufacturing channel.

Name

Niobium Microsystems

Legal name

Niobium Microsystems, Inc.

Website

https://niobiummicrosystems.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2024

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

51–100 employees

Short description

Niobium Microsystems builds hardware and cloud infrastructure for fully homomorphic encryption, enabling computation on encrypted data without decryption. Its The Fog IaaS platform and FHE Accelerator ASIC serve enterprise customers in healthcare, financial services, defense, and AI infrastructure.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

FHE Semiconductor and Encrypted Cloud Infrastructure

NAICS

Semiconductor and Related Device Manufacturing (334413), Semiconductor and Other Electronic Component Manufacturing (3344)

SIC

Semiconductors & Related Devices (3674)

akta.pro primary industry

Compute & Acceleration ICs (CPU/GPU/AI/FPGA/ASIC) (HDAHABAC)

akta.pro secondary industries

Security & Trusted Hardware ICs (Secure Element/TPM/Crypto) (HDAHABAF), Networking & Data Center Silicon (Switch/NIC/DPU/SerDes) (HDAHABAB), Quantum-Safe Hardware & Embedded Security (TPM/secure elements/firmware) (HDAGAGAJ), PQC Migration, Readiness Assessment & Crypto-Agility (HDAGAGAD)

Keywords

• Homomorphic encryption hardware
• Encrypted cloud computing
• FHE accelerator chips
• Secure computation platform
• Privacy-preserving AI infrastructure

Headquarters

HQ city

Dayton

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Hardware or Manufacturing

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Supply Chain, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. The Fog Cloud Platform (IaaS): Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform providing encrypted computation capabilities. Organizations can run applications on encrypted data with hardware acceleration. Revenue likely derived from usage-based access to the platform, FHE accelerator hardware, and potentially subscription-based access to pre-built FHE applications.
2. FHE Accelerator Hardware (ASIC): Sale of proprietary FHE accelerator ASIC chips for encrypted computation. Second-generation silicon targeting production deployment with hyperscalers and AI infrastructure providers.

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Niobium Microsystems builds hardware-accelerated fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) silicon and The Fog, an Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud platform purpose-built for computing on encrypted data without ever decrypting it. The company sells custom FHE accelerator ASICs manufactured at Samsung Foundry's 8nm process and powers The Fog with its proprietary mistic Core processor, claiming up to 25x faster FHE performance than GPUs. Target customers include hyperscalers, AI infrastructure providers, financial institutions, life sciences firms, blockchain developers, and defense organizations that need provable, quantum-resilient privacy during computation.

Product overview

Niobium Microsystems offers a platform-plus-accelerator architecture centered on The Fog (Niobium FOG™), the first Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform purpose-built for fully homomorphic encryption. The platform is powered by the proprietary mistic Core processor and complemented by a production-grade FHE Accelerator ASIC (manufactured via SEMIFIVE/Samsung Foundry at 8nm) that delivers up to 25x faster FHE performance than GPUs. Pre-built FHE applications and an SDK enable developer access, while a partnership with CryptoLab extends the platform's privacy-preserving AI capabilities to real-time encrypted GenAI and LLM inferencing.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• The Fog: Private cloud infrastructure platform for fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), the first IaaS purpose-built for FHE with dedicated acceleration hardware.
• mistic Core

Products and services

• The Fog (Niobium FOG™) The Fog is an encrypted cloud infrastructure platform (IaaS) purpose-built for fully homomorphic encryption. It enables enterprises and developers to run applications on encrypted data without ever decrypting it, providing mathematically guaranteed provable privacy, hardware-accelerated compute via the mistic Core processor, pre-built FHE applications, and SDKs for rapid deployment.
• mistic Core Processor mistic Core is a proprietary processor architecture designed to enable encrypted computation at speeds practical for real-world cloud and AI infrastructure workloads, powering The Fog platform's hardware acceleration for FHE.
• FHE Accelerator ASIC (Second Generation) The FHE Accelerator ASIC is a high-performance fully homomorphic encryption accelerator chip designed for commercial deployment with hyperscalers and AI infrastructure providers. The second-generation chip is manufactured on Samsung Foundry's 8nm Low Power Ultimate process via SEMIFIVE, targeting production deployment of encrypted computation hardware.

Quantifiable outcome

• Up to 25x faster performance than GPU-based FHE computation
• +1 more outcomes

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability1 record

Feature4 records

Partnerships

Four partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• SEMIFIVEcoreOEM/ Whitelabel/ Licensing Partner · 20 February 2026SEMIFIVE, a South Korean custom AI semiconductor solutions provider, secured a design win contract valued at approximately KRW 10 billion (USD 6.86 million) to develop Niobium's FHE accelerator ASIC. SEMIFIVE provides SoC development capabilities as a Design Solution Partner in Samsung's SAFE ecosystem. The partnership moves Niobium toward deploying encrypted computation technology with hyperscalers and AI infrastructure providers.
• Samsung FoundrycoreTechnology or Integration · 20 February 2026Manufacturing partnership for Niobium's FHE Accelerator platform using Samsung Foundry's mass-production proven 8nm Low Power Ultimate process technology. The second-generation chip leverages Samsung's proven manufacturing capabilities for commercial production of encrypted computation hardware.
• CryptoLabcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 10 October 2024Strategic partnership to develop privacy-preserving AI technologies, enabling real-time encrypted GenAI and LLM inferencing. Combines CryptoLab's homomorphic encryption software with Niobium's FHE acceleration hardware to improve speed and security in AI data processing. Collaboration aims to set global standards for privacy-preserving AI and address cyber threats with quantum-resistant security.
• Global FoundriescoreTechnology or Integration · 7 May 2024First-generation FHE chip built at Global Foundries' US fab using 12nm low power process. Manufacturing partnership for initial FHE accelerator chip tape-out.

Scale indicators6 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• Duality Technologies: Duality Technologies offers a commercial FHE-based secure computation platform (OpenFHE) for data collaboration across enterprises and government. Like Niobium, it targets regulated industries such as healthcare, finance, and defense with privacy-preserving analytics, making it the closest software-stack competitor.
• Zama: Zama builds open-source FHE tooling (Concrete, TFHE-rs) for developers and AI/ML workloads, including encrypted model inferencing. Direct overlap with Niobium's The Fog platform in enabling FHE-based GenAI and LLM inferencing on encrypted data.
• Enveil: Enveil provides FHE-based secure search and analytics for financial services and government, letting organizations derive insights from data without exposing it. Comparable product positioning to Niobium's The Fog for use cases like encrypted transaction processing.
• Inpher: Inpher offers a privacy-preserving computation platform combining FHE and secure multi-party computation for regulated industries including financial services and healthcare. Directly competes with Niobium in enterprise encrypted computation workloads.

Emerging players

• Cornami: Cornami develops a scalable FPGA-based acceleration architecture targeting FHE, fully encrypted search, and real-time AI inferencing. Closest hardware-acceleration competitor to Niobium's FHE ASIC approach.
• D-Wave Quantum: D-Wave provides quantum annealing systems and is investing in quantum-safe and post-quantum security solutions. Adjacent competitor in the post-quantum and quantum-resilient computing category where Niobium positions its FHE stack.

Broad incumbents

• Intel: Intel has active research programs in FHE acceleration (HERACLES, partnership with Intel Labs) and offers CPUs/GPUs that can host FHE workloads. A broad incumbent with overlapping capability but no dedicated FHE silicon yet.
• NVIDIA: NVIDIA GPUs are the baseline against which Niobium claims 25x better FHE performance. NVIDIA also publishes cuPQC and explores GPU-FHE acceleration, making it the dominant incumbent performance benchmark for the category.
• IBM: IBM runs one of the most mature FHE research programs (HELayers, IBM Cloud HSM-based FHE services). A broad incumbent with deep cryptography IP and an existing cloud footprint relevant to Niobium's hyperscaler strategy.

Others

• CryptoLab: CryptoLab is a strategic FHE software partner to Niobium (announced Oct 2024) and a South Korean homomorphic encryption specialist. Treated as a peer for ecosystem mapping since it sells competing FHE software stacks to similar Korean/Asian enterprise customers.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/NiobiumMicro
• LinkedInniobium.co/linkedin

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles6 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds5 records

Investors14 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Niobium Microsystems