European startup Wodan AI secures €2 million to advance homomorphic encryption, allowing AI models to operate on sensitive data without decryption.
Wodan AI, a European startup focused on running artificial intelligence models directly on encrypted data, has raised €2 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Spanish investors JME Ventures, Swanlaab, and Adara Ventures, with additional participation from Belgium-based ScaleFund.
The company is developing homomorphic encryption technology that allows machine-learning, computer vision, and large language models to operate on fully encrypted data—eliminating the need to decrypt sensitive information during processing. The approach is aimed at reducing data exposure risks in sectors where privacy, regulation, and digital sovereignty are paramount.
Wodan AI said its platform is designed to meet some of Europe’s most stringent regulatory requirements, making it particularly relevant for industries such as finance, defense, healthcare, and critical infrastructure, where conventional AI deployments often collide with data protection constraints.
“Recent advances in homomorphic encryption make it possible, for the first time, for large organizations to apply AI to sensitive data without compromising security,” said Bob Dubois, the company’s chief executive and co-founder. He said the new funding would be used to expand the platform’s technical capabilities and strengthen Wodan AI’s position in what he described as a growing European market for secure artificial intelligence.
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As part of its expansion strategy, Wodan AI plans to relocate its global headquarters to Madrid and consolidate its research and development operations there. The company aims to build out a European center of expertise focused on advanced cryptography, machine learning, and privacy-preserving technologies.
Spain, the company said, offers the technical talent required to support sovereign AI development. “With our headquarters, R&D center, and team growth in Madrid, we aim to establish a European reference hub for private, secure AI designed for the most demanding sectors,” said Manuel Pérez Yllan, Wodan AI’s chief technology officer and co-founder.
The startup is also working on pilot projects with a Spanish financial institution, which it described as early validation of encrypted AI for real-world, high-stakes use cases. The funding will be used to hire additional research staff, accelerate the technical roadmap, and extend the platform to support more advanced encrypted computer vision and large language model capabilities.
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The round highlights a broader shift in Europe’s AI ecosystem, where interest is growing in technologies that reconcile advanced analytics with strict privacy and sovereignty requirements—rather than forcing trade-offs between the two.
