Insider Brief
- Fortaegis raised $50 million to commercialize chip-based security technology for AI infrastructure, autonomous systems and connected machines.
- Its architecture uses the unique physical properties of silicon chips to generate changing encryption keys and verify identities across networks.
- The funding will support commercial production, FPGA deployments and development of application-specific chips in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Dutch startup Fortaegis has raised $50 million to commercialize a security architecture that uses the physical properties of silicon chips to protect AI infrastructure, autonomous systems and connected machines.
The oversubscribed Series A was led by Singapore-based Serendipity Capital, according to the company. Participants included TEL Venture Capital, the corporate venture arm of chip-equipment maker Tokyo Electron, as well as TNO, Prodrive Technologies, NP-Hard Ventures, NovaCapital, Access Ventures and Coalition Capital.
Fortaegis plans to use the funding to move from technology testing into commercial production and deployment. The company expects to begin commercial manufacturing in 2027, the Financial Times reported.
Founded in October 2023, Fortaegis says it is working with more than 25 companies and governments across AI infrastructure, defense, telecommunications, semiconductor manufacturing and other critical industries. Its government work includes organizations in the U.S., U.K., Japan, Singapore, Germany, France and the Netherlands, according to the FT.
“The security and prosperity of the West and its allies increasingly depend on who controls the foundations of compute. AI and quantum are making that question more urgent. Fortaegis was founded on the conviction that security cannot remain something we add on top of digital systems — it must become part of the foundations of compute itself. This investment allows us to accelerate that mission globally,” founder and CEO Boudewijn Wijnands said in the announcement.
Ilyas Khan, chair and founding shareholder of Fortaegis, said the architecture could become a widely used security layer as AI and quantum technologies develop.
“AI and quantum computing are not incremental shifts; they are changing the architecture of computing itself. Having founded and then built Quantinuum, I have seen how technologies that begin at the frontier can become foundational infrastructure. Fortaegis has the technology and ambition to do the same forSecure Compute — making security intrinsic to computing from silicon upward — and will become one of the hottest companies around as it becomes integral and essential for the rollout of compute in the next decades. Remember the name!” said Khan, who is also founder of the quantum computing company Quantinuum.
Security for Autonomous AI
Fortaegis is positioning its technology as a way to establish trust among AI systems, devices and data-center equipment without relying entirely on software.
That issue could become more important as companies deploy autonomous AI agents that can make decisions, access information and interact with other systems with limited human supervision. Large networks of agents and devices must be able to verify one another’s identities and determine whether instructions and data are authentic.
The Fortaegis Silicon Platform spans hardware, firmware, cryptography and software. It uses tiny physical variations created during semiconductor manufacturing to give each chip a unique digital fingerprint.
Fortaegis extracts information from that fingerprint to generate and frequently change encryption keys. The company says the keys are not permanently stored on devices, reducing the opportunity for attackers to locate and steal them.
The architecture is designed to extend identity checks, security policies and system management across potentially millions of devices and AI agents. Fortaegis says it can be deployed through data-center server racks, ruggedized systems for military, industrial and other demanding environments, compact edge devices or technology embedded directly into chips.
“Computing infrastructure is the central arena of geopolitical and economic competition today. As AI advances and quantum computing takes off, security and control of computing foundations are essential. Fortaegis is addressing that challenge at the architectural level,” said Chris Miller, a Fortaegis U.S. board member and author of “Chip War.”
AI and Quantum Risks Converge
The growth of AI is increasing the amount of sensitive information moving among data centers, processors, sensors and autonomous devices. At the same time, future quantum computers could undermine widely used encryption methods that protect much of that information.
Fortaegis describes its architecture as naturally quantum-safe because its keys are derived from the physical properties of silicon rather than generated solely through mathematical processes. Wijnands told the FT that a quantum computer would not have a mathematical model it could use to reconstruct those keys.
The quantum-safe claim will require broader independent analysis. The FT reported that national laboratories in several countries have validated the technology, but the article did not identify all the laboratories or provide detailed test results and threat models.
TNO, the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, has tested the technology. Marc Zegveld, head of the TNO group that conducted the assessment, told the FT that researchers used aggressive hacking methods but could not penetrate the integrated architecture.
Moving Toward Commercial Production
Fortaegis said customer-funded development programs are progressing from technical validation into production qualification and commercial deployment. The company has filed 17 patents and has another 14 in development.
The new funding will support production of Fortaegis products built with field-programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs, across the U.S., Europe, Singapore and Japan. FPGAs are chips that can be configured for particular tasks after manufacturing.
The company will also advance its development of application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs. These are chips manufactured to perform defined functions and could allow Fortaegis to embed its security architecture more directly into commercial products.
“Secure Compute will become increasingly important across many industries. Fortaegis has developed a strong foundational technology, and we are committed to supporting its transition to scalable production and deployment,” said Peter Janssen, founder and chief technology officer of Prodrive Technologies.
Fortaegis says internal and customer testing has demonstrated connection performance more than 200 times faster than conventional approaches. The company and the FT did not provide detailed benchmarks identifying the protocols, hardware or network conditions used in that comparison.
The startup is also working with ASML and Eindhoven University of Technology on a security framework for autonomous AI systems. It is in talks with U.S. hyperscale cloud providers and AI laboratories, according to the FT.
“The most consequential deep-tech companies do more than improve an existing category — they create a new layer of infrastructure. We invested in Fortaegis because it is building exactly that: an architecture spanning silicon, hardware and software for a security challenge that becomes more important as AI, autonomy and quantum computing scale. We believe Secure Compute will own the foundational layer across both commercial and national-security infrastructure,” Serendipity Capital founder and CEO Rob Jesudason said.