Graz-Based TACEO Raises €4.8M Funding In Seed Round

The round was led by Archetype VC, with support from a16z CSX, Cyber.Fund, A.Capital Ventures, Polymorphic Capital, and several well-known angel investors.

Lukas Helminger, Co-founder and CEO, comments: “For over a decade, industries have needed to compute across private, distributed datasets, yet privacy and collaboration never coexisted. The ability to instantly verify encrypted information without revealing the data is no longer a nice-to-have – it’s essential if we want to achieve transparency, fairness, and control in the AI era – before we no longer have the choice. The new cash injection will help us scale our technology to solve what we believe is the internet’s biggest unsolved problem.”

Founded in 2022 by a team from Graz University of Technology, TACEO is known for creating the Poseidon hash function (widely used in zero-knowledge systems) and a privacy-preserving COVID-19 tracking system—proving their expertise in secure, high-performance cryptography.

TACEO develops software that allows multiple parties to work with sensitive data without revealing the actual information. Their unique “Private Shared State” model is powered by coSNARKs, which combine Multiparty Computation (MPC) and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZK) to protect data and verify results.

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TACEO has already proven its real-world value by partnering with World (formerly WorldCoin), creating encrypted iris-matching software that protects the biometric data of over 14 million users—even from World itself. This is believed to be the largest MPC-secured dataset ever recorded.

“Decentralised compute has evolved rapidly in recent years. As on-chain use cases proliferate, the need for native private shared state as core infrastructure becomes more and more obvious,” says Archetype Founder and General Partner, Ash Egan. “TACEO is at the forefront of building programmable privacy into the Web3 compute stack, and we have had massive conviction in Lukas and the team since we first met, following Lukas’s presentation on coSNARKs at Archetype HQ. TACEO’s mission is wildly bold, and we’re ecstatic to announce our partnership with the team as they lock in ‘Private Shared State’ as a core computing standard for crypto.”

TACEO says its technology could allow AI models and autonomous agents to verify facts and make decisions without ever accessing personal or sensitive data—improving privacy, boosting security, and enabling smarter AI.

In decentralised finance (DeFi), where stablecoins alone are worth over €219 billion, there’s a constant challenge between maintaining transparency and protecting privacy. Institutions either use public blockchains that risk exposing data or build complex, isolated systems.

TACEO offers a better alternative—enabling secure transaction and identity verification while proving compliance, all without revealing the underlying data.

Philipp Sippl, board member of World, comments: “We’ve deployed TACEO to build one of the largest privacy preserving systems in the world. The problem that we’re addressing is not a theoretical one, it’s a problem that needs a solution now and it’s also very important that such a system is built in a way that ensures strong cryptographic privacy, especially with such a widespread application. TACEO’s infrastructure here has been key to fulfill that mission.”

The new funding will help TACEO grow its team and scale its technology, expanding its applications beyond crypto and DeFi into areas where data privacy is essential—like identity verification, financial services, and AI.

About TACEO

TACEO is creating a network for Private Shared State, allowing encrypted data to be used in joint computations without exposing inputs. Backed by top investors like Archetype and a16z CSX, TACEO combines ZK, MPC, and coSNARKs to deliver secure, verifiable computing for the next generation of data privacy.