Beneath the noise of AI hype and token seasons, the idea of a Zama invisible revolution is quietly becoming one of the most important shifts of our decade, a change you won’t notice until it’s everywhere. Like the day HTTPS turned online shopping from a gamble into a habit, this new layer won’t arrive with fireworks.
This article is the first episode of our series, “The Confidential Internet”, where each week we explore a new chapter in Zama’s vision, and how it could redefine the future of the web. Episode one begins here: the invisible revolution.
Who is Zama? The French unicorn behind the invisible revolution
Founded in Paris in 2020, Zama is built around a radical mission: make privacy the default layer of the Internet.
Its cofounders reflect this duality:
- Dr Rand Hindi (CEO) : AI entrepreneur, previously founder of Snips (acquired by Sonos), bridging cutting-edge research with real-world impact.
- Dr Pascal Paillier (Chief Cryptographer) : inventor of the Paillier cryptosystem, one of the world’s most cited cryptographers.
In less than five years, they’ve assembled a team of dozens of PhDs and engineers across Europe. In June 2025, Zama raised $57M (Series B) led by Pantera Capital and Blockchange Ventures, bringing total funding above $150M and officially reaching unicorn status (> $1B valuation).
What sets them apart? Unlike most AI and Web3 startups, Zama is radically open-source. Its cryptographic libraries are public, auditable, and already tested by developers around the world. Transparency is not a buzzword, it’s the core of their model.
Why the Zama invisible revolution matters now
The Internet hides a paradox: the more connected we are, the less private we become.
- “Encrypted” chats leak metadata.
- “Free” platforms turn every action into advertising revenue.
- AI systems silently consume our data to predict behavior.
Take, for example, the European “Chat Control 2025” proposal. If enacted, even apps considered private would be forced to scan your messages before encryption. This isn’t dystopian fiction, it’s the present legal battlefield shaping the future of privacy.
We’ve all felt it: ads that follow us across sites, cookies that track us long after we’ve closed a tab, algorithms recommending what we were about to search, and services that seem to know more about us than we’ve told anyone. The Internet has become less a tool and more a mirror we don’t control.
As DeepSeek recently envisioned, tomorrow’s Internet may be powered by AI platforms that can anticipate your behavior and predict your desires, often with little transparency and no explicit consent. Without new foundations, the web risks becoming a system that knows us better than we know ourselves. (Visions of the Internet by DeepSeek)
Cypherpunks warned us years ago: “Privacy is not secrecy. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal yourself to the world.”
The Zama invisible revolution aims to restore that power, not as an optional add-on, but as infrastructure. And that’s rare: very few companies are working not on apps, not on platforms, but on the invisible foundation of the Internet itself.
The invisible foundation of tomorrow’s web
The Internet has always advanced in invisible layers. Nobody talks about TCP/IP or TLS anymore, yet without them, nothing would work. SSL quietly made e-commerce and online banking possible, an invisible standard that scaled trust.
Zama wants privacy to follow the same path: invisible, silent, indispensable.
Not a product you download, not a feature you toggle, but the foundation of the Confidential Internet.
This is why it’s called a revolution: because if it succeeds, you won’t see it. You’ll just live in it.
The French path to a Confidential Internet
There’s another invisible part of this story: geography.
While most breakthroughs in cryptography and AI are driven by Silicon Valley or Asia, this revolution is being engineered in Paris. That matters. It means Europe isn’t just reacting to digital empires, it’s building alternatives.
The Zama invisible revolution isn’t only about math; it’s about digital sovereignty. And in a decade defined by surveillance capitalism, that makes all the difference.
The invisible French revolution
If Zama succeeds, you may never hear their name again. Just as you don’t think about TLS or HTTPS when you buy online, privacy-preserving computation will vanish into the background.
That’s the paradox: the most important revolution of the 2020s may be the one you never see, because it’s protecting you.
And it may well have started in Paris.
👉 To follow the story and support the builders, explore the Zama Creator Program.
FAQ
1. Why call it the “invisible revolution”?
Because if Zama succeeds, privacy will be woven into the web like electricityessential, but unseen.
2. How is Zama different from other privacy startups?
It focuses on Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) and ships open-source tools, bridging research and real adoption.
3. Why highlight France and Europe?
Because Zama proves Europe can lead on privacy-preserving AI and Web3 infrastructure, not just follow.
4. Will ordinary users notice this shift?
No. Like SSL, the Zama invisible revolution will run silently under the apps and services people already use.
5. What comes next in the series?
Episode 2 explores how Zama is rethinking rewards. Forget the broken promises of airdrops, what happens when creators become the fuel of the Confidential Internet?
