Startup InfoSum Inc. today announced that it has raised $65 million in funding to broaden the adoption of its namesake software platform, which enables companies to launch joint data analytics projects with each other in a secure manner. 

The funding was provided by Chrysalis Investments, a publicly traded investment firm based in the U.K. InfoSum told the Wall Street Journal that it raised the round at a pre-money valuation of $300 million. The startup generated revenues of more than $4 million in 2020 and hopes to more than triple sales this year.

Companies often collaborate with partners on analytics initiatives. For example, two online retailers might combine purchase logs from their respective e-commerce websites to identify popular products. Processing data from multiple companies makes it possible to uncover more valuable insights than a firm could glean by analyzing only its own internal information.

The challenge is that processing data from different organizations usually requires the participating organizations to share the data they wish to analyze with each other. That’s not always practical. Although two online retailers might theoretically benefit from combining their purchase logs to find popular products, in practice they may not necessarily wish to share such important business data with the competition. Moreover, privacy regulations limit how firms can exchange data with another.

InfoSum has developed a software platform that enables for two companies to jointly analyze their information without sharing it with each other.

Normally, enterprises manage joint analytics initiatives by pooling the information they wish to analyze in a centralized repository. All the participants receive access to the repository. When one of the companies is looking to answer a business question, it accesses the other participating firms’ datasets and analyzes them to find the answer.

InfoSum takes a different approach. Instead of requiring that data be stored in a centralized repository, its platform allows enterprises pursuing a joint analytics initiative to keep their information in separate environments. When one of the companies wishes to analyze the other firms’ datasets to answer a business question, InfoSum delivers the answer without providing access to the datasets themselves.

One of the technologies the startup uses to facilitate analysis without data access is known as differential privacy. Using differential privacy, it’s possible to extract certain insights from a collection of records without sharing the individual records. For example, given a collection of purchase logs, it would be possible to determine the average value of the purchases without sharing the size of each individual purchase.

InfoSum says its platform has applications in several industries. Online retailers may use it to run joint analytics projects with partners, for example to understand shopper preferences better, without sharing internal business information. Life sciences companies can collaboratively analyze clinical data as part of research projects while still complying with the healthcare sector’s strict privacy rules. InfoSum sees use cases in a number of other markets as well, including advertising and financial services.

Furthermore, the startup says, large organizations can leverage its technology to help their own subsidiaries launch joint analytics initiatives with one another. 

“InfoSum recognized early on the need for new technology in data privacy,” said InfoSum founder and Chief Technology Officer Nick Halstead. “Now as the market leader in data collaboration, this investment from Chrysalis allows us to accelerate the development of our unique infrastructure and expand its innovative capabilities into new arenas.”

The challenge of allowing companies to jointly analyze their data while preserving privacy has also caught the attention of the chip industry. Intel Corp. last month led a funding round for Opaque Systems Inc., a startup founded by researchers from the University of California at Berkeley that’s targeting the same market as InfoSum.

Opaque Systems facilitates secure data analysis using the hardware enclave technology found in server processors from Intel and other chipmakers. The technology can turn a segment of a server’s memory into a highly secure, isolated data storage environment. Opaque Systems allows companies to perform analysis of their data inside such memory segments to reduce the risk of data breaches.

IBM Corp. is also working to ease joint data processing projects for enterprises. Companies usually store their business records in an encrypted form and decrypt them only when they need to be used by an analytics tool or another application. IBM is developing technology that makes it possible to keep data encrypted even while it’s being analyzed and thus reduce cybersecurity risks. 

Image: InfoSum