Multifactor Wins Hertz Foundation's Harold Newman and David Galas Entrepreneurial Initiative
2025-07-25
We're honored to share that Multifactor has been selected for the Hertz Foundation's Harold Newman and David Galas Entrepreneurial Initiative, recognizing our work to advance post-quantum cryptography and mathematically-provable identity security. In this post, we'll discuss what this award means for our mission and on the groundbreaking open-source technologies we're building to reshape identity security for the AI era.
The Hertz Foundation is generously supporting Multifactor via the Harold Newman and David Galas Entrepreneurial Initiative.
Our Mission
At Multifactor, our goal is to reinvent zero-trust identity security for the modern, agentic web.
Legacy identity security solutions aren't cutting it in the AI era. When these companies say “zero-trust,” they often really mean “trust our software, hardware, and company to be free of vulnerabilities and insider threats.”
Multifactor uses a fundamentally different, modern approach to usable identity security. Our platform leverages patented post-quantum cryptographic techniques to bring mathematically-provable security to complex modern applications while remaining easy to use and deploy.
We're also proud to be a registered Public Benefit Corporation, which means we are committed to advancing cybersecurity technologies for the benefit of society as a whole.
Recognizing Innovation
The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, established in 1957, supports innovation in science and technology by identifying promising innovators and empowering them to pursue bold solutions to our toughest challenges, from national security to human health. The Foundation has supported over 1,200 Hertz Fellows, some of whom have gone on to earn Nobel Prizes, MacArthur Fellowships, and the Fields Medal. The Hertz Fellowship is widely considered one of the most prestigious recognitions in science and technology, with an unparalleled track record of identifying breakthrough potential early. For emerging technology companies like Multifactor, recognition from the Hertz Foundation represents meaningful validation from an institution that has consistently spotted transformative innovations. Vivek Nair, co-founder and CEO of Multifactor, was named a Hertz Fellow in 2022 for his graduate research in applied cryptography at the University of California, Berkeley.
Since 2012, the Hertz Foundation's Harold Newman and David Galas Entrepreneurial Initiative has strived to support Hertz Fellows in the development of new technologies with real-world impact. The initiative provides non-dilutive grant funding, along with mentoring from successful entrepreneurs within the Hertz community, to help promising scientific innovations transition from academic research to real-world impact. Recipients have gone on to found successful companies and develop technologies that address significant challenges across various fields. Established by honorary Hertz Fellow Harold Newman and named in honor of David Galas, the initiative reflects the Foundation's recognition that breakthrough innovations often emerge when rigorous research meets entrepreneurial vision. Selection for this award indicates the Foundation's confidence in a project's potential to create meaningful change.
We're excited to have been chosen as a recipient of the Newman-Galas initiative, and are incredibly thankful to the Hertz Foundation for this early recognition of our company and mission. This recognition validates our belief that post-quantum cryptography and mathematically-provable security represent the future of identity protection in an increasingly complex digital landscape. The funding and mentorship from the Hertz community will help us accelerate our development timeline and bring our vision of truly zero-trust security to market faster than we could have achieved alone.
The Path Forward
Thanks in part to the support of the Newman-Galas initiative, we're accelerating our work on several key public benefit technologies that will form the foundation of next-generation identity security. These projects represent our commitment to advancing the field through both theoretical research and open-source implementations that can be adopted widely across the industry.
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We've recently announced that we're building the “Multifactor Entropy Stack” (MFKDF2, MFCHF2, and MFDPG2), a set of novel, user-centric cryptographic primitives designed to address persistent challenges in authentication and account security through trustless key derivation, hashing, and credential generation.
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We've also introduced Checkpoint, a system that uses novel cryptographic techniques to enable easy revocable, non-repudiable, and fine-grained sharing of any online account resource, via our recent demo video and blog post.
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Last but not least, we're also developing Switchboard, a system that securely cryptographically enforces complex authorization policies.
And, of course, we continue to work on our core commercial software product, which builds on MFKDF2, MFCHF2, MFDPG2, Checkpoint, and Switchboard to provide a best-in-class secure account management and sharing solution.
Many of our projects, including MFKDF2 and Checkpoint, remain partially unfunded and in need of support. If you are interested in helping this technology get off the ground, or envision potential use cases for your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out.
We're redefining zero-trust — so you can protect your application with confidence.
Identity is your first and last line of defense, and the root cause of most application security breaches. Multifactor's provably secure zero-trust solutions cryptographically guarantee that only authorized users can access sensitive data, turning identity into your greatest asset in the fight against cyber threats. Learn more about our research, or reach out to explore working together.
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