Data security and privacy are at the forefront of enterprise priorities, and amidst a transition to the cloud, companies are grappling with the need to have more control over their data. This increasing importance is driven by:

1. Migration to the cloud: Enterprises are moving their own workloads to the cloud, and are also adopting cloud-based vendors, which has led to a loss of control of data.
2. Increasing breaches, violations, fear of embarrassment: Hackers are more sophisticated than ever, and the cost of breaches is enormous. As an example, it is estimated that government agencies and private corporations will spend months and as much as $100B to root out the Russian malicious code from the Solarwinds hack.
3. Increasing privacy regulation: Proliferating breaches and the demand by consumers for more privacy and control of their own data have led governments to adopt new regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in California.

NEA has been investing in enterprise software companies for decades, and we've witnessed data security and privacy emerging as a top priority for the CTOs within our enterprise portfolio given the significant business impact. Enterprises often find it difficult to entrust their data to software vendors, which can negatively impact sales for these software vendors—lengthening sales cycles and even killing deals entirely. Vendors have been compelled into various forms of security theater to address these data security concerns—including vendor security questionnaires, approved vendor lists, and certifications such as SOC2 and ISO27001.

Fundamentally, we believe customers of software vendors deserve knowledge and control of:

1. Data residency: Customers want to control in what country their data resides.
2. Single-tenancy: Customers want to determine if their data is separate from others.
3. Data governance: Customers want to control who has access to their data. Customers want to know the data flow and know if it is safe in motion, in use, and at rest.

The mission to empower customers with access and control to these core data components is why we are thrilled to announce that we’ve partnered with Antimatter and led their recent Series A financing. Antimatter offers data control as an infrastructure service. By pioneering a new cloud deployment architecture, they are able to give enterprises control of their data with proven cryptographic security. Customers of software vendors can now control their data and set their own granular permissions around their data. Software vendors can unlock revenue opportunities and achieve faster sales cycles by proving that customer data is safe - without a security team and without engineering effort, through Antimatter’s no code solution for existing infrastructure.

Antimatter’s platform is powered by the availability of secure enclaves (now offered by AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud), the widespread use of Kubernetes, and the founding team’s years of breakthrough research around systems and cryptography, which has enabled them to build a scalable key management solution. Andrew Krioukov, Co-Founder & CEO, worked on distributed systems as a Computer Science PhD Candidate at UC Berkeley and is a repeat founder, formerly having founded and led venture-backed startup Comfy, which was successfully acquired by Siemens. Michael Andersen, Co-Founder & CTO, invented groundbreaking cryptographic solutions for decentralized identity, authorization, and trust during his PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley. Beau Trincia, Co-Founder & VP of Design, has 20 years of product design experience including seven years at IDEO. We’re incredibly excited to partner with the Antimatter team on their journey to transform how cloud services are deployed and the way software is sold.

If you’re interested in joining the Antimatter team, you can find open positions at: https://www.antimatter.io/team