Belfort

TLDR

Belfort is a Leuven-based KU Leuven/COSIC spin-off building hardware accelerators for encrypted compute, having raised $6M in seed funding in September 2025.

Overview

Belfort emerged from the COSIC research group at KU Leuven, one of Europe's leading cryptography research units. The company is building hardware that accelerates computation on encrypted data, a capability known as homomorphic or confidential computing, which allows processing sensitive data without first decrypting it.

The $6M seed round closed in September 2025. The use case spans healthcare, finance, and government data processing where privacy regulations impose strict constraints on data handling.

Belfort represents the commercialization of fundamental cryptography research from KU Leuven's COSIC lab, which has a long track record of producing applied security technology.

Funding History

• Seed: $6M (September 2025)

Key People

• Michiel Van Beirendonck - Founder and CEO