Sitehop, a trailblazer in the realm of networking encryption solutions, has successfully closed a £5m Seed funding round.
This financial milestone was achieved with contributions from an impressive consortium of investors, including Amadeus Capital Partners and Manta Ray Ventures, alongside Mercia Ventures, the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF), and founders of Event Horizon Capital & Osney Capital. Strategic angels such as Rick Lazansky, founder of Silicon Catalyst, and Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR, also played a pivotal role in this funding round.
The company is on a mission to address a pressing issue in today’s digital landscape: the significant slowdown of communication networks caused by current software encryption solutions. This dilemma forces communications infrastructure providers to choose between expensive infrastructure upgrades to reduce latency or compromise on security by foregoing encryption—both undesirable options.
Sitehop introduces a groundbreaking solution to this challenge with its hardware-enforced enterprise encryption. The flagship product, SAFEblade 1100, stands out by supporting over 4,000 secure tunnels simultaneously, boasting an encryption or decryption latency of less than 900 nanoseconds, and delivering a data throughput of 100Gbps. This innovation is particularly crucial for scenarios that involve high bandwidth network traffic, such as in data centres, cloud computing, and edge computing environments.
The funds from this recent round will be instrumental in expanding Sitehop’s global footprint, including beefing up sales and support engineering staff in key markets like Brazil, the US, and India, as well as expanding its Yorkshire headquarters. Plans include hiring additional engineers and production workers, moving to a new location in Sheffield, and advancing the range of SAFE products to secure all types of data-in-motion. Furthermore, the investment will support Sitehop’s ambition to integrate its products into the backbone of most of the world’s networks in the foreseeable future.
Sitehop CEO Melissa Chambers expressed enthusiasm about the funding, highlighting its significance in broadening the company’s global reach and advancing its technology roadmap. She emphasized the goal of positioning Sitehop’s products as central to the world’s network infrastructure.
Nick Kingsbury from Amadeus Capital Partners praised Sitehop for its innovative approach to tackling fundamental challenges in network infrastructure security, noting the technology’s flexibility and scalability. Similarly, Lawrence Barclay of Manta Ray Ventures lauded the Sitehop team’s thoughtful approach to network security, underscoring the critical importance of securing data connectivity without compromising performance or energy efficiency.
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