From breakthrough to deployment: our $6M seed round

Belfort, a new KU Leuven spinoff, launches world’s first Hardware Accelerator for Encrypted Compute and raises $6M to bring it to market:

• Encryption startup Belfort spins out of KU Leuven’s COSIC lab and launches world’s first hardware solution that accelerates encrypted compute, enabling real-time processing of encrypted data without decryption – making privacy-preserving applications commercially viable for the first time
• The $6 million seed funding round is led by Vsquared Ventures, with participation from Anagram and strategic angels including Jeff Dean (Chief Scientist at Google) and Naval Ravikant
• Belfort will use the new funding to double its team and accelerate product, technology, and business development across its San Francisco and Leuven offices

San Francisco / Leuven – September 24, 2025 – Belfort, a KU Leuven spin-off building the future of encrypted compute, today announced the successful close of its $6 million seed funding to bring encrypted data processing into practical, real-time use. The round is led by deep tech specialist Vsquared Ventures, with participation from Anagram, Protocol VC, Inovia Capital, Syndicate One, Prototype, Credibly Neutral and high-profile angel investors including Jeff Dean (Google) and Naval Ravikant. With the new funding, Belfort will grow its team, further improve its technology, support early enterprise pilots, and begin developing its own custom chip.

Urgent need for privacy-preserving computing

When data security fails, the consequences are enormous. In July, it was revealed that a UK Ministry of Defence breach had exposed nearly 19,000 Afghan nationals and intelligence personnel, prompting a £7 billion emergency response. Incidents like this show the urgent need to protect data not just in storage, but during processing. Belfort’s hardware accelerator, the world’s first purpose-built for encrypted compute, makes it possible to compute directly on encrypted data without ever decrypting it, overcoming the speed and cost barriers that long held this field back.

Belfort was spun out of KU Leuven’s world-renowned COSIC lab, from the group of Prof. Ingrid Verbauwhede, a global authority in cryptographic hardware and two-time ERC grant laureate. Co-founders Michiel Van Beirendonck and Furkan Turan, award-winning researchers, developed the technical breakthroughs behind Belfort, and are joined by Laurens De Poorter, former crypto VC at Kraken Ventures and deeptech strategist at Google[x], with substantial experience in operational leadership.

From research breakthrough to real-world applications

“AI is transforming everything, but the infrastructure to keep sensitive data and models secure hasn’t caught up," says Michiel Van Beirendonck, Co-Founder & CEO of Belfort. ”Encrypted compute is the answer, but without hardware acceleration, it doesn’t scale. The company that cracks that challenge could become the next billion-dollar company.”

“For decades, we’ve explored how to make computation secure by design. With Belfort, we’re finally bringing those ideas into practice. It’s the first time we’ve seen cryptographic theory translate so directly into usable, real-time systems. It’s a game-changer for anyone who needs to protect sensitive data.”

Prof. Ingrid Verbauwhede

Belfort Co-Founder and Professor at KU Leuven

The research underpinning Belfort’s core technology was developed over several years, and matured through several grants and research projects including a significant grant by the European Research Council and by the team participating in a competitive U.S. government contract with DARPA.

Herbert Mangesius, Founding Partner at Vsquared Ventures, says: “Belfort's hardware acceleration removes the computational barriers that have long held back encrypted computation, arriving just as digital currencies and the wider digitization of finance, healthcare, and government demand scalable privacy infrastructure. We see Belfort as building the critical layer for fully homomorphic encryption, enabling the move to large-scale practical deployment and turning privacy from a constraint into a competitive advantage.”

Practical deployment and recognition

Unlike traditional security that protects data only at rest or in transit, Belfort enables encrypted data to be processed without exposure to servers, cloud providers, or middlemen with privileged access. Already available today on AWS Marketplace, its hardware can be deployed across healthcare, finance, and government with minimal integration complexity. This makes encrypted compute practical for the first time, powering applications such as fraud detection, genomic analysis, and secure government operations.

Belfort has won Stage Two 2024, Europe’s largest university spin-off competition and was selected as a finalist at Hello Tomorrow 2025, the world’s premier summit for deeptech startups. Additionally, co-founder Prof. Ingrid Verbauwhede was awarded the 2025 FWO Excellence Prize, widely regarded as “the Flemish Nobel Prize,” for lifetime achievement in science and technology.