Niobium Unveils Encrypted Cloud Infrastructure Powered by FHE
Dayton, Ohio-based Niobium, a company specializing in hardware acceleration for fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), announced on April 2, 2026, the introduction of The Fog™ — a private cloud infrastructure platform engineered to allow organizations to run applications and AI workloads on data that is never decrypted, even while being processed.
The platform's name reflects its core security promise: like actual fog, nothing inside can be observed from the outside. Decryption keys remain exclusively in the hands of the data owner, and Niobium itself has no access to customer data at any point during computation. The Fog is currently available in private beta, with a full public release scheduled for late Q2 2026.
Addressing a Longstanding Cloud Security Dilemma
The fundamental challenge The Fog aims to solve is one that has persisted since the dawn of cloud computing: to use data in the cloud, organizations have traditionally been required to decrypt it — exposing it to potential risk. FHE, which is mathematically proven to preserve data privacy, eliminates this tradeoff by enabling computation directly on encrypted data.
Kevin Yoder, CEO of Niobium, framed the announcement in stark terms:
"For too long, organizations have had to accept data exposure as the cost of doing business in the cloud. The Fog eliminates that tradeoff. We're building a cloud platform where data can be used without ever being revealed. Our goal is to make encrypted computing practical, scalable, and accessible to the teams that need it most."
The architecture is designed to support several high-value use cases, including full utilization of regulated datasets, secure collaboration between partners, and private AI and machine learning applications — scenarios where data sensitivity has historically made cloud adoption difficult or legally restricted.
Self-Service Infrastructure and New Leadership
The Fog is designed as a self-service encrypted cloud platform, enabling developers and enterprises to provision servers and custom hardware, deploy FHE applications, and run production workloads — all without sharing decryption keys with any third party, Niobium included. A unified cloud portal provides users with centralized management over the entire encrypted compute infrastructure.
To oversee the cloud infrastructure buildout, Niobium has appointed Rob Sherrard as Head of Cloud. Sherrard described the platform's significance in broad terms:
"Encrypted compute is the next platform shift, and we're building the infrastructure that makes it not just possible, but inevitable. Inside The Fog, computation happens entirely under encryption. Owners hold the keys, the fog never lifts, and the work still gets done."
Hardware Strategy: FPGA Now, ASIC on the Horizon
Niobium has identified two historically significant barriers to FHE adoption — performance and usability — and addressed both through a phased hardware strategy.
At launch, The Fog runs on the mistic™ Core FPGA accelerator, which Niobium claims delivers up to 2x faster FHE performance than any GPU or competing accelerator currently available on the market.
Looking ahead, Niobium is developing a purpose-built ASIC in partnership with SEMIFIVE and Samsung Foundry. This ASIC is intended to deliver significantly higher performance while maintaining full software compatibility with applications already built on The Fog, ensuring that early adopters can transition seamlessly to the new hardware without re-engineering their workloads.
Pre-Built FHE Applications at Launch
To lower the barrier to entry and illustrate real-world use cases for encrypted computing, The Fog will launch alongside a library of pre-built FHE applications. The initial application set includes:
- Encrypted Semantic Search (Secure RAG): Enables querying of sensitive data by meaning rather than exact keyword match, protecting both the query itself and the underlying dataset at all times.
- Federated Learning: Allows machine learning models to be trained across distributed, encrypted datasets without centralizing or exposing the raw data.
- Machine Learning Classification (e.g., Network Intrusion Detection): Facilitates analysis of encrypted data to identify patterns and threats without ever revealing the underlying information.
Additional template applications are currently in development and will be made available on an ongoing basis.
Developer Ecosystem and Accessibility
A significant aspect of Niobium's go-to-market approach is its commitment to making FHE accessible to developers who do not have a background in cryptography. The Fog is backed by a complete software ecosystem that includes a compiler, SDK, template applications, documentation, and a single-pane-of-glass interface for managing hardware, applications, and workloads collectively.
Early access participants in the private beta receive several benefits:
- Early access to the mistic Core FPGA accelerator hardware
- First access to new platform features, applications, and performance updates ahead of the public launch
- Direct engagement with Niobium's engineering and cryptography teams
Developers and organizations interested in participating in the private beta can register at niobium.co.
Company Background
Niobium is headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, with additional offices in Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, California. The company positions itself as a builder of the first dedicated hardware platform specifically designed to advance fully homomorphic encryption into commercial applications — a domain that has long been considered theoretically powerful but practically constrained by computational overhead.
With The Fog now entering private beta and a public launch on the near-term horizon, Niobium is making a significant push to move FHE from academic curiosity to enterprise-grade infrastructure.
Source: Dark Reading