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In other news, ZeroRISC, a Boston-based startup, has successfully raised $5 million in seed funding for its first commercial cloud security service for silicon chips. The funding round was led by Cambridge Angels, a prominent network of U.K. angel investors, with participation from private investors including Rajat Malhotra of Wren Capital and Pete Hutton, the former President of Product Groups at Arm. ZeroRISC will use the capital to develop and deliver their cloud security service based on the OpenTitan open-source silicon root of trust (RoT) project.
ZeroRISC, founded in April 2023, consists of members of the original OpenTitan project team from Google. The team had been working on OpenTitan and open-source silicon for about five years and had reached the tapeout stage before some resourcing decisions at Google impacted their work. Taking this opportunity, the team formed ZeroRISC and successfully completed the tapeout in July. They are now expecting to receive their chips back in the coming weeks.
OpenTitan is a collaborative open-source silicon root of trust chip design project that aims to create trustworthy chip designs for consumer devices, data centers, storage, and peripherals. The project prioritizes transparency and allows for inspection of the hardware for security vulnerabilities and contribution to the design and development.
The root of trust is a secure piece of silicon that establishes immutable trust at the lowest layers of a system. It ensures the authenticity of the silicon itself, its firmware, and the higher-level software of the platform. ZeroRISC’s implementations are secure by default, with all operations authenticated and the design extensively reviewed and tested against physical attacks.
ZeroRISC’s goal is to provide a comprehensive cloud security service for silicon, prioritizing transparency and trustworthiness for data centers, IoT devices, edge devices, and ICS/OT. They are collaborating with commercial integration partners, with Nuvoton being the first in line.
With the recent funding, ZeroRISC will focus on open-source development and the production-quality implementation of OpenTitan ecosystem components. They will also develop a proprietary integration kit for the integrated RoT, a secure-by-default embedded operating system, and a set of cloud-based services that integrate with the secure OS and silicon designs.
The first discrete open-market chip from ZeroRISC boasts resistance against physical attacks and supports post-quantum secure boot. It adheres to commercially relevant certification guidelines and aims to establish secure transfer of ownership.
ZeroRISC’s mission is to advance the work of the OpenTitan project by delivering secure cloud-based services for device security and management. They aim to extend zero trust principles below the operating system and back into the supply chain, ensuring a transparent and trustworthy foundation for secure systems.
Nuvoton, a partner of ZeroRISC’s, recognizes the demand for silicon RoT solutions and believes that value-multiplying software and services are key to driving adoption. They are excited to partner with ZeroRISC to demonstrate the potential of OpenTitan through an end-to-end solution for addressing complex security challenges.
With its innovative approach to cloud security for silicon chips, ZeroRISC is poised to make a significant impact in the industry. With the support of its investors and partners, the company is set to realize long-term success and broad adoption.
You can stay updated on the latest news and developments by following ZeroRISC and the OpenTitan project.
