Ziroh Labs, a deeptech startup at the forefront of Innovation in Artificial Intelligence, announces the appointment of Dr Whitfield Diffie, ForMemRS, winner of the 2015 Turing Award for the creation of public-key cryptography, as Ziroh Labs' Chief Technologist. This alliance is a testament to Ziroh Labs' commitment to democratise AI across the globe using CPUs, which echoes Diffie's dedication to make cryptography available to all.

Whitfield Diffie is a living legend in cryptography. His co-invention of public-key cryptography in 1976 solved the long-standing problem of secure key distribution, allowing cryptographic networks to be scaled to internet dimensions —a groundbreaking achievement that earned Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, his advisor at Stanford, the 2015 ACM Turing Award.

Whitfield Diffie devoted his cryptographic career to working in industry, beginning as the Manager of Secure Systems Research at the laboratory of the Canadian telephone system and retiring as a Sun Fellow and Chief Security Officer of Sun Microsystems.

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Throughout his career, Diffie has addressed complex challenges to information security and trust in the digital world. Since leaving Sun, he has served as VP for Information Security and Cryptography at ICAAN, and continued a close association with the Centre for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford that he began in the late 1990s. Diffie studied mathematics at MIT and started his career with research in both the MIT and Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratories.

The appointment of Dr Whitfield Diffie as Chief Technologist marks a pivotal step in Ziroh Labs' foundational vision for artificial intelligence. This collaboration accelerates the next stage of Kompact AI's development, with emphasis on decentralization, accessibility, and scalability.

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Their collaboration was facilitated by Herman Collins, a talent advisor and executive search connector with deep AI experience, who has been working with Diffie since recruiting him for Sun in 1991.

Dr Whitfield Diffie, Chief Technologist at Ziroh Labs, says, "Many people who worry about Artificial Intelligence think that its use should be restricted".

"My concern is that what should be available to everyone will come to be controlled by a tight monopoly, which will decide what AI will and won't do for you.

 

Kompact AI's reduction in costs makes such a monopoly less likely.''

Hrishikesh Dewan, Co-founder and CEO of Ziroh Labs, says, "Democratization of AI, by itself, is a scientific pursuit. Inventions and innovations must occur at the fundamental level to enable the engineering of mathematical structures that can be executed on a CPU, a crucial component in making AI accessible to a broader audience. Modern AI and public-key cryptography have an important thing in common: both are mathematical technologies that work best when they are directly serving the individual. Although Dr Diffie is renowned for leading a worldwide movement to make cryptography accessible to all, his involvement in AI began at its nascent stage when Diffie worked alongside two of its founders: Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy. For us, at Ziroh Labs, there is no joy greater than the opportunity to work with him.''

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Ziroh Labs is redefining AI infrastructure with Kompact AI, an AI platform that enables large language model (LLM) inference on CPUs. This innovation eliminates dependency on expensive GPUs, making AI workloads significantly more affordable and accessible.