Austria: Schoenherr advises Austrian crypto startup TACEO on USD 5.5m seed financing round

The investment was led by Archetype, with strong participation from a16z CSX, Cyber.Fund, A.Capital, Polymorphic and other key partners.

"We are pleased to have supported TACEO on this impressive seed financing round, which is a milestone for TACEO and another key transaction for our venture capital team," said Schoenherr partner and venture capital expert Thomas Kulnigg.

TACEO COO Stefan Plank added: "We couldn’t have asked for a better partner than Schoenherr. Thomas and Dominik know venture deals inside out, especially when US funds are involved. Super pragmatic, fast to respond and focused on getting things done – they even helped us close ahead of schedule. From day one, we knew we were in good hands."

TACEO, led by Lukas Helminger (CEO), Stefan Plank (COO) and Daniel Kales (CTO), was founded in 2022 by a team from Christian Rechberger's research group at Graz University of Technology.

TACEO builds software that enables multiple parties to collaborate on sensitive data without exposing the underlying information or the need for centralised trust. This data model – a "Private Shared State" – is powered by a cryptographic tool called coSNARKs that combines two approaches: one for protecting data during computation (Multiparty Computation – MPC) and one for proving outcomes (Zero-Knowledge Proofs – ZK).

The Schoenherr team advising TACEO consisted of Thomas Kulnigg (partner), Dominik Tyrybon (attorney at law) and Maximilian Czernin (associate).

Archetype was advised by Cooley LLP and LARK. a16z CSX was advised by E+H.