Niobium's 'The Fog' Encrypts AI Workloads Live

Startup Niobium Microsystems is launching 'The Fog,' a cloud platform using fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) to process sensitive data without ever decrypting it. The zero-trust system keeps decryption keys solely with data owners, targeting regulated industries like healthcare and finance that have avoided cloud AI due to security concerns. Niobium's custom 'mistic Core' FPGA chip makes FHE twice as fast as GPUs, addressing the technology's historically prohibitive computational costs. Template apps for encrypted search, federated learning, and ML classification are available, with a custom ASIC developed alongside Semifive and Samsung Foundry planned to further boost performance.