Vsquared Ventures led the round for the startup, which is based in San Francisco and Leuven, Belgium. Montreal’s Inovia Capital was among the other participants, alongside Google DeepMind and Google Research chief scientist Jeff Dean and prominent investor Naval Ravikant. (The Logic)

Talking point: Most software applications today run on cloud services, which must decrypt data to process or analyze it, potentially exposing personal or sensitive information, says Belfort co-founder Laurens De Poorter. The startup says its hardware, by contrast, keeps information encrypted as it works on it. Belfort also claims its chips match the speeds of the graphics processing units widely used to run AI, despite being cheaper and more efficient. “We’re hoping to become the no-brainer in the space,” De Poorter said, citing the health care, finance and public sectors as potential customers. Belfort will use the funding to double its seven-person team, and eventually plans to develop its own chip; it’s currently reprogramming processors from other suppliers.