Privacy engineering software company, Privitar, has raised $16 million in a Series A funding round led by Partech Ventures with participation from CME Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. Existing investors IQ Capital, 24Haymarket and Illuminate Financial have reinvested in the company.

Privitar will use the funds to accelerate it’s product delivery and developing it’s core IP. The firm will also look to build out its sales outfit in Europe while expanding to key geographies, including the United States.

The landmark investment signals the growing significance of the privacy engineering discipline, as data-driven organisations look to maintain customer trust and comply with legislation such as the incoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Unprecedented growth in the amount of personal data generated and collected, feeding into advanced analytics and machine learning, has made privacy risk a boardroom issue. Privitar’s software products helps organisations to mitigate these risks, and enable them to get the most out of sensitive data without compromising on privacy and security.

“Advanced analytics and machine learning applications are fuelled by data, which is often sensitive. Privitar’s software enables our customers to innovate rapidly while maintaining an uncompromising approach to data privacy. We believe the use of technological controls to protect privacy is essential to preserve customer trust in the data-driven economy,” Jason du Preez, CEO, Privitar, said.

Privitar currently operates across several industry verticals including financial services, telecommunications, pharmaceutical and government. Customers are using Privitar’s software to make sensitive data available internally for advanced analytics and machine learning, to enable collaboration with third parties, and to safely accelerate the adoption of cloud computing.

“Data-driven decision making and intelligence is becoming critical for all businesses. Firms cannot afford to compromise on privacy protection given the potential consequences to brand and reputation,” Jean-Marc Patouillaud, managing partner, Partech Ventures, said. “We have decided to invest in Privitar because we see them as an excellent option for organisations that want to get the most of their data while ensuring full customer trust”

With businesses facing increasing regulation and public pressure, the global privacy engineering market is currently estimated to exceed $50 billion. The discipline incorporates techniques such as data anonymisation, differential privacy and encryption to enable the extraction of insight from data while protecting the individual’s privacy.

“Balancing the acceleration of advanced analytics and increasing data privacy concerns is an ongoing challenge for financial institutions and other highly regulated industries globally,” Rumi Morales, executive director and head of CME Ventures said. “CME Ventures is excited to back Privitar’s pioneering technology and world-class team, as they tackle this important issue.”

Privitar was advised by PWC Legal for this transaction. Partech was advised by Taylor Wessing, Mazars and QuantMetry.