36Kr's first | "Tree of Light Technology" has completed two rounds of financing in a row, with a total amount of nearly 100 million yuan

36Kr has been informed that "Tree of Light Technology" (hereinafter referred to as "Tree of Light"), whose main business is privacy computing, officially announced today that it has completed two consecutive rounds of financing. It is understood that the investors in the two rounds of financing are the fourth paradigm and Shenzhen Venture Capital, with a total amount of nearly 100 million yuan. Zhang Jiachen, founder and CEO of "Tree of Light", said that the two rounds of financing funds will be used for continuous research and development of products and commercial expansion.

When it comes to privacy computing, this concept has gradually become known to the public since 2020. First, 2020 is known as the first year of privacy computing. At that time, due to the requirements of policy compliance with risk avoidance and the demand for business to continue to exert the value of big data, a number of privacy computing companies were born in the industry, hoping to make data "available and invisible" through technical means. In 2021, when the Data Security Law and the Personal Information Protection Law are settled one after another, the attention of all sectors of society to privacy protection and privacy computing has also peaked. Therefore, in 2021 and beyond, the focus of discussion on privacy computing in all walks of life has shifted from science popularization to industry landing progress, and this year is also regarded by many people as the "first year of private computing commercialization".

Tree of Light is a company that 36Kr continues to report on. Founded in 2017, it has previously received investment from Jianfeng Qiyun, Xinyuan Capital, Ceyuan Venture Capital, Chaosheng Capital and China Chengxin Credit. Zhang Jiachen told 36Kr that since 2017, the Tree of Light has been committed to the exploration of the privacy computing business. In the past 5 years of specific progress, she introduced 36Kr from the three aspects of technical products, the construction of industry standards and commercialization:

In terms of technical products, the "Tree of Light" first started from the TEE (Trusted Computing) route, and then expanded the technical route according to the progress of the industry and customer needs, and now has formed a complete product matrix of federated learning + MPC + hidden query + TEE. Specifically, the current "Tree of Light" has reached cooperation with many domestic chip manufacturers to achieve progress in the localization of TEE. In the actual landing, because a relatively complete product matrix has been formed, the company will also recommend matching product types to customers according to customer needs and according to the actual requirements of different scenarios. Overall, the current "Tree of Light" has successively developed the "Tree of Light Privacy Computing Platform", "Cloud Federated Learning Platform", "Tree of Light Data Collaboration Service Platform", "Tree of Light Multi-party Secure Computing Platform", "Automated Machine Learning Platform" and other products.

In the construction of industry standards, "Tree of Light" has participated in the formulation of a number of privacy computing technical standards of the Chinese Academy of Information and Communications Technology and the Gold Standard Commission. It is worth mentioning that he also served as the first author of the first federal learning technical standard of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and led the formulation of this technical standard, and was the first to pass the evaluation of the BCTC Testing Center of the central bank system.

In terms of commercialization progress, the current corporate clients have covered a wide range of industries such as banking, insurance, communications, advertising, healthcare and government. For example, in 2020, "Tree of Light" and China UnionPay cooperated to assist them in building a privacy computing platform, and through this platform, UnionPay data assets can release value to the outside world, and work with leading enterprises in the insurance, banking and logistics industries to carry out marketing, risk control and other scenario modeling practices.

Business diagram

In summary, the construction of technical products, industry standards and commercialization progress are several aspects that Zhang Jiachen believes that the "Tree of Light" continues to polish and achieve results.

In addition, on the general inspection point of the industry, it said that the ecological cooperation and data network construction of the "Tree of Light" also have their own characteristics. Among them, in terms of ecological cooperation, the company has reached cooperation with Huawei, Fourth Paradigm, Tencent Cloud, etc. In cooperation with Huawei, the two sides jointly launched the "software + hardware" privacy computing pure domestic integration technology solution, becoming an external developer of JustZone Server 001 supporting TA encryption by Huawei Kunpeng; in cooperation with the fourth paradigm, the two sides combined artificial intelligence algorithms including AutoML with privacy computing engines to improve the intelligence level of the privacy computing platform; in cooperation with Tencent Cloud, the two sides jointly provided government data circulation solutions. Let more C-end users feel the practical significance of privacy computing, "For example, we will combine water and meteorological data through privacy calculation to make related waterlogging predictions." Zhang Jiachen gave an example. Finally, in cooperation with a well-known information security company, the two sides will not only integrate security technologies and privacy computing in the fields of data classification, identity authentication and commercial cryptography, and launch a perfect solution in the field of data security, but also study and promote the standard certification of advanced passwords together - which is also another important significance of cooperation with the company. In terms of data network construction, the current "Tree of Light" has more than 30 data partners, including credit data, call data, mobile Internet data and agricultural trade vertical data.

In addition to the progress of the business, Zhang Jiachen also told 36Kr that since the "Tree of Light" entered the industry in 2017, it has also made its own positioning clearer while iterating itself. It can be observed that different privacy computing companies currently have many differentiated characteristics in terms of data operation, data transaction capability construction and targeted products, which also forms a different positioning between the same industry. Zhang Jiachen said that "becoming a product-based company related to privacy technology" is the goal of "Tree of Light" today.

"Privacy tech doesn't just need privacy computing. Privacy computing is a link to protect privacy, and it also needs to be combined with other products in the link to form a more complete tool chain. She explained further. Talking about the origin of this positioning, Zhang Jiachen said that he has long observed the international progress, and believes that in the future, with the improvement of relevant domestic laws and regulations, the protection of C-end privacy will require more and more detailed tools to help achieve, which is also more in line with the positioning of the "Tree of Light". Therefore, in the future development, the "Tree of Light" will also carry out product innovation and business iteration around this direction.

Finally, in terms of team building, the current "Tree of Light" has nearly 100 employees, including the country's top computer and cryptography experts, who have worked in Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Ant Financial, Cambrian, China CITIC Bank, China Merchants Bank and other world-renowned enterprises, of which more than 80 people have a product development team, more than 85% graduated from 985/211 universities, 70% have master's degrees or above. The company's founder, Jiachen Zhang, graduated from Harvard University with two master's degrees in business administration and public administration, and was jointly trained by the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and now serves as a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Digital Economy Council. Yuan Chen, the company's chief algorithm and cryptography scientist, holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Fudan University and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and his postdoctoral supervisor is Professor Ronald Cramer, a fellow of the International Cryptography Society and president of the European Cryptography Society, and is also the scholar with the largest number of papers on privacy computing in mainland China at the top three international cryptography conferences. After this round of financing, the company will continue to build a talent echelon in order to further achieve the goal of "becoming a privacy technology product company".