Belfort Labs

Belfort Labs is a Belgian deep-tech company focused on encrypted computing — the ability to process sensitive data without ever decrypting it. A spin-off from KU Leuven's world-renowned COSIC research lab, the company combines breakthroughs in purpose-built hardware and algorithmic improvements to accelerate encrypted workloads to practical, production-grade performance. Its stated mission is to make confidentiality inherent rather than optional, so that organizations can extract value from data while it remains protected end to end. The company positions itself around three core values: performance without compromise (workloads that once took hours now take minutes), seamless adoption (purpose-built hardware that integrates into existing environments), and security as a foundation (data stays protected throughout every operation). Belfort targets high-stakes domains where privacy and trust are non-negotiable, including national security and government, finance, healthcare and genomics, and crypto and blockchain. In these settings it enables use cases such as confidential analytics, fraud detection, risk and compliance work, collaborative diagnostics on patient and genomic data, and fully confidential smart contracts, payments, and DeFi protocols. Belfort is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, and is led by a team of cryptographers, mathematicians, and entrepreneurs. CEO Laurens De Poorter is a serial entrepreneur and investor focused on cryptography and AI infrastructure; he previously helped commercialize breakthrough technologies at Google[x], invested in crypto startups at Kraken Ventures, and founded Syndicate One in Belgium. Co-founder Prof. Ingrid Verbauwhede is a professor at KU Leuven and a leading figure in the COSIC lab, whose decades of research into secure-by-design computation underpin the company's technology. As a private, venture-stage deep-tech company, Belfort Labs does not disclose detailed financials or a full product catalog publicly. Its public identity rests on the promise of "trust is all you need" in an AI-first world, and on the claim that encrypted compute can finally be made fast enough for real-world deployment.

Belfort Labs emerged as a spin-off from KU Leuven's COSIC lab, one of the world's leading research groups in cryptography and information security. The company was founded to translate decades of academic work on secure-by-design computation into practical, deployable technology. Its co-founder, Prof. Ingrid Verbauwhede, has spent decades exploring how to make computation secure by design, and describes Belfort as the vehicle for finally bringing those ideas into practice. The founding premise is that encrypted computation — processing data while it remains encrypted — has long been theoretically possible but practically too slow for real-world use. Belfort's approach combines purpose-built hardware with algorithmic improvements to close that performance gap, aiming to turn workloads that once took hours into operations that take minutes. This is framed as the "next layer of secure computing," enabling sensitive data to be used at scale without ever being decrypted. Commercially, the company is led by CEO Laurens De Poorter, a serial entrepreneur and investor focused on cryptography and AI infrastructure. His background includes helping commercialize breakthrough technologies at Google[x], investing in crypto startups at Kraken Ventures, and founding Syndicate One in Belgium. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and studied electrical engineering at KU Leuven and Imperial College London. The leadership team is rounded out by cryptographers, mathematicians, and entrepreneurs. Belfort is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, and markets its encrypted compute capabilities across national security and government, finance, healthcare and genomics, and crypto and blockchain. As a private deep-tech venture, it has not publicly disclosed detailed financial results, funding rounds, or a full product catalog. Its public narrative centers on the slogan "trust is all you need" and the vision of an AI-first world in which confidentiality is inherent rather than optional.

• Founded as a spin-off from KU Leuven's COSIC lab

• Laurens De Poorter appointed CEO

• Public launch of encrypted compute platform positioning across defense, finance, healthcare, and crypto

Deep-tech encrypted computing for high-stakes domains, delivering confidentiality by design at production speed and scale.

• Encrypted compute hardware

  Purpose-built hardware that accelerates encrypted workloads to production performance.

• Encrypted compute acceleration platform

  Hardware and algorithmic stack enabling data to be processed without decryption.

1. 1Belfort official websitebelfortlabs.com
2. 2Belfort About pagebelfortlabs.com
3. 3Wikidata: Belfort Labs (Belgium)wikidata.org