Pi Squared Raises $12.5 Million in Seed Round for Verifiable Computing

Pi Squared, a groundbreaking company dedicated to advancing verifiable computing through zero-knowledge technology, announced a significant milestone on Tuesday. The company successfully secured $12.5 million in a seed funding round, with Polychain Capital leading the investment. Notable participants in the round included ABCDE, Bloccelerate, Generative Ventures, Robot Ventures, and Samsung Next. Additionally, prominent angel investors such as Justin Drake from the Ethereum Foundation and Sreeram Kanaan, the founder of EigenLayer, contributed to the funding.

The newly raised capital will fuel Pi Squared’s efforts to enhance its product offerings. The company’s flagship product, the “Universal Settlement Layer,” is designed to facilitate the settlement of blockchain transactions, referred to as “claims,” in any programming language. Grigore Rosu, the CEO of Pi Squared and a computer science professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, explained the concept in an interview with CoinDesk. Rosu shared that the inspiration for Pi Squared stemmed from his extensive academic background and research endeavors.

In addition to the Universal Settlement Layer, Pi Squared is developing a cutting-edge “Universal ZK Circuit” that leverages zero-knowledge technology to enable trustless remote computing, artificial intelligence, and interoperable smart contracts across various blockchains and decentralized applications (dApps). The company detailed in a press release that this innovation will involve the creation of a universal and remarkably compact ZK circuit capable of verifying mathematical proofs. This approach will offer verifiable-computing correctness assurances to different programming languages and virtual machines without the need for translation to a common language or instruction set architecture.

While Pi Squared is currently in the proof-of-concept phase, Rosu anticipates that the project will advance to the testnet stage by the conclusion of 2024, marking a significant milestone in the company’s journey towards revolutionizing verifiable computing.