Paradigm leads $55 million round in ZK proofs startup Succinct Labs with participation from Polygon founders

Zero-knowledge proofs startup Succinct Labs announced it has raised $55 million in a seed and Series A financing round led by Paradigm.

Other investors participating in the round include Robot Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Geometry, ZK Validator, as well as Polygon co-founders Sandeep Nailwal and Daniel Lubarov, and EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan, according to a statement.

A zero-knowledge proof allows one entity to prove something is true without revealing details about what they know.

"ZK proofs are one of the most critical technologies to blockchain scaling, interoperability and privacy, but are too complex for most developers today," the statement also said. "Succinct’s mission is to lower this barrier with our zkVM, SP1, and our decentralized prover network."

Succinct Labs's successful raise follows last month's uptick in venture funding across blockchain companies. In February, there was a "slight surge in venture funding within the blockchain sector, with approximately $852 million invested across 177 funding deals," according to The Block Research.

Venture funding. Image: The Block Research.

SP1 is the first 100% open-source zkVM performant enough to rival custom ZK circuits. With SP1, developers can use ZK with normal programming languages, reuse existing crates and libraries, and iterate quickly with auditable and maintainable code," Succinct Labs said in its statement. "Today, teams like Celestia, Wormhole, Lido, Avail, Near, and Gnosis are using Succinct’s infrastructure to build ZK-enabled applications." 

Succinct Labs is based in San Francisco and led by co-founder and CEO Uma Roy, according to LinkedIn.