Blind Insight

Cover Block

Field	Value
Name	Blind Insight
Tagline	Combines real-time searchable encryption with fine-grained programmable data access controls
Headquarters	Santa Monica, California, United States
Founded	2022
Stage	Pre-Seed
Business Model	API / Developer Platform
Industry	Cybersecurity (Privacy-Enhancing Technologies)
Technology Type	Software (Non-AI)
Geography	North America
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Founding Team	Co-Founders (3+)
Funding Label	Pre-seed (amount undisclosed)

Links

• Website: https://www.blindinsight.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blind-insight
• Product beta: https://beta.blindinsight.io

The Short Version

Blind Insight is a Santa Monica-based cybersecurity startup building an API platform that lets organizations search and analyze sensitive data while it remains encrypted [Blind Insight] [Crunchbase]. The company was founded in 2022 by Jackie Peters (CEO), Nick Sullivan (technical co-founder) and Jathan McCollum (CTO), and has raised an undisclosed pre-seed round led by Sequoia Capital with participation from Altari Ventures and 500 Global [Crunchbase]. The core product pairs real-time searchable encryption with fine-grained, programmable access controls and audit logging, and is presented to developers as a NIST-approved, FIPS-compliant set of APIs with a free public beta [Blind Insight]. The team's public profile leans heavily on internet infrastructure and applied cryptography credentials, with co-founder Nick Sullivan listed as a member of the Internet Architecture Board [LinkedIn]. The go-to-market focus is regulated verticals such as healthcare and K-12 education, where HIPAA, FERPA and emerging EU pseudonymization guidance are forcing buyers to find ways to use sensitive data without exposing it [Blind Insight]. Over the next 12 to 18 months the items worth watching are conversion of beta developers to paying API customers, the first publicly named enterprise design partner, and whether the round led by Sequoia is followed by a priced seed extension.

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Crunchbase, LinkedIn and the company's own primary site.

Taxonomy Snapshot

Axis	Value
Stage	Pre-Seed
Business Model	API / Developer Platform
Industry / Vertical	Cybersecurity, Privacy-Enhancing Technology
Technology Type	Software (Non-AI), applied cryptography
Geography	North America (Santa Monica, CA)
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Founding Team	3 co-founders
Funding	Pre-seed, amount undisclosed, Sequoia-led

The Company in Brief

Blind Insight was incorporated in 2022 and operates from Santa Monica, California [Crunchbase]. The founding premise is that organizations have spent two decades building firewalls and access gateways around sensitive data and still routinely choose between protecting that data and getting value from it. The company frames its mission as resolving that trade-off [Blind Insight].

The most concrete external markers are the Crunchbase listing of a Sequoia-led pre-seed round [Crunchbase], a recognition cited on the company's blog as a top woman-led startup tied to CEO Jackie Peters [Blind Insight], and the launch of a public developer beta at beta.blindinsight.io [Blind Insight]. PitchBook classifies the company under network management software, while Crunchbase and Bounce Watch place it in cyber security and enterprise software [PitchBook] [Bounce Watch].

There are minor inconsistencies in the public record: Crunchbase shows a Sequoia-led pre-seed with obfuscated amount and date, while Tracxn states that Blind Insight has not raised a funding round [Crunchbase] [Tracxn].

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Crunchbase and the company website, with a noted discrepancy at Tracxn.

What They Have Built

The product is an API-first private data platform. According to the company, it "combines real-time searchable encryption with fine-grained programmable data access controls" [Blind Insight] and uses "NIST-approved, FIPS-compliant encryption" so that data remains protected "even during processing and analysis" [Blind Insight]. A developer can store records through Blind Insight's APIs, query them, and apply role- or policy-based access rules without decrypting the underlying data on the server side. Audit logging of access events is listed alongside the encryption and access-control primitives [Blind Insight].

Industry collateral points to two named vertical motions. A healthcare page describes how hospital systems and healthcare software vendors can mobilize internal data for quality improvement and product development without exposing it to internal theft or accidental disclosure, framed against HIPAA [Blind Insight]. A separate insights post discusses K-12 EdTech in the wake of a 2024 student-data breach [Blind Insight]. A third post addresses the European Data Protection Board's pseudonymization guidance [Blind Insight].

Searchable encryption is a well-studied family of cryptographic schemes. The presence of a free public beta at beta.blindinsight.io [Blind Insight] suggests the team is prioritizing developer feedback over closed enterprise pilots at this stage.

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Product claims sourced directly from the company's primary domain and corroborated by the Crunchbase company description.

Market Research and Opportunity

Privacy-enhancing technologies are moving from academic curiosity to procurement line item. The shift is being pushed by HIPAA enforcement pressure on healthcare data flows, the EDPB's evolving stance on pseudonymized personal data in the EU, and a wave of breaches in adjacent sectors such as K-12 EdTech [Blind Insight] [Blind Insight].

Sizing reference	Value
PitchBook category	Network Management Software
Crunchbase / Bounce Watch category	Cyber Security, Enterprise Software

Demand drivers: the EDPB pseudonymization guidance raises the bar for what counts as protected personal data in the EU [Blind Insight]; healthcare buyers have a quantifiable pain in HIPAA exposure [Blind Insight]; and the K-12 segment is now actively procuring privacy infrastructure [Blind Insight]. The most relevant adjacent or substitute markets are confidential-computing hardware enclaves, tokenization vendors, and the data-clean-room category.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Demand drivers confirmed by primary company posts; no third-party TAM available in captured sources.

Who Else Is Fighting for This

The competitive map is best drawn by segment. The first segment is hardware-rooted confidential computing, anchored by the cloud platforms themselves: AWS Nitro Enclaves, Azure Confidential Computing and Google Cloud Confidential VMs. The second segment is the academic-lineage PET vendors that have raised capital around homomorphic encryption, secure multiparty computation and federated analytics. The third segment is the tokenization and format-preserving encryption incumbents embedded in payments and healthcare stacks.

Blind Insight has a defensible edge in developer surface area and category framing. A free public beta, a documented API, and explicit FIPS / NIST language [Blind Insight] are the right ingredients for bottoms-up adoption. The team's cryptography and internet-infrastructure pedigree, with Nick Sullivan's IAB affiliation [LinkedIn] and Jathan McCollum's engineering background [Crunchbase], lends credibility. That edge is real but perishable: it lasts as long as the hyperscalers treat searchable encryption as a niche and as long as no better-funded PET vendor pivots to a developer-first motion.

Where the company is most exposed is distribution. The hyperscalers can bundle confidential computing into existing enterprise agreements; the larger PET vendors already have CISO-level relationships; and tokenization incumbents own the compliance checkboxes in healthcare and payments procurement.

Opportunity

If Blind Insight executes, the prize is becoming the default API layer that every regulated software vendor reaches for when they need to query sensitive data without decrypting it.

Scenario	What happens	Catalyst	Why it is plausible
Embedded API for regulated SaaS	Blind Insight becomes the default privacy layer inside hospital-systems software and K-12 EdTech vendors	A named design-partner reference customer in either healthcare or EdTech	Sequoia's pre-seed lead [Crunchbase] gives the company runway to win a lighthouse account
EU compliance default	Blind Insight is positioned by integrators as the practical answer to the EDPB's tightened pseudonymization stance	A favorable EDPB ruling cycle and at least one large EU customer adoption	The company is already publishing analysis of the relevant EDPB guidance [Blind Insight]

Sources

1. [Blind Insight] Blind Insight | Real-time searchable encryption access controls auditable logs | https://www.blindinsight.com
2. [Blind Insight] Balancing data security and utility just got easy | https://www.blindinsight.com/about
3. [Blind Insight] APIs for Data Privacy, Security, and Compliance | https://www.blindinsight.com/product
4. [Blind Insight] Insights into privacy-enhancing technologies | https://www.blindinsight.com/insights
5. [Blind Insight] HIPAA-Compliant Healthcare Data Analytics | https://www.blindinsight.com/healthcare
6. [Blind Insight] Closing Deals with Data Privacy and Security Excellence | https://www.blindinsight.com/insights/closing-deals-with-data-privacy-and-security-excellence-a-roadmap-for-2025-and-beyond
7. [Blind Insight] Practical Implications of the New EDPB Pseudonymization Guidelines | https://www.blindinsight.com/insights/practical-implications-of-the-new-edpb-pseudonymization-guidelines
8. [Blind Insight] Blind Insight Named Top Woman-Led Startup | https://www.blindinsight.com/insights/blind-insight-named-top-woman-led-startup
9. [Blind Insight] Pricing | https://www.blindinsight.com/pricing
10. [Crunchbase] Blind Insight - Company Profile & Funding | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blind-insight
11. [Crunchbase] Pre Seed Round - Blind Insight | https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/blind-insight-pre-seed--fb2cd4c2
12. [Crunchbase] Blind Insight - Financial Details | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blind-insight/company_financials
13. [Crunchbase] Jackie Peters - Founder & CEO | https://www.crunchbase.com/person/jackie-peters-d76e
14. [Crunchbase] Nick Sullivan - Technical Co-Founder | https://www.crunchbase.com/person/nicholas-sullivan
15. [Crunchbase] Jathan McCollum - CTO | https://www.crunchbase.com/person/jathan-mccollum
16. [LinkedIn] Blind Insight company page | https://www.linkedin.com/company/blind-insight
17. [LinkedIn] Nick Sullivan - Internet Architecture Board | https://www.linkedin.com/in/ntsullivan/
18. [LinkedIn] Jathan McCollum profile | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jathanism/
19. [PitchBook] Blind Insight Company Profile | https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/531104-59
20. [Bounce Watch] Blind Insight Company Profile | https://www.bouncewatch.com/explore/startup/blind-insight
21. [Tracxn] Blind Insight - 2025 Company Profile | https://tracxn.com/d/companies/blind-insight/__SqHnRlrVDyDZ2xMmwXcDRho-KSh3kAqV21LTf9iW6z0
22. [SoftwareAdvice] Blind Insight Reviews, Pricing & Demos | https://www.softwareadvice.co.uk/software/526727/Blind-Insight