NTT Research launches Scale Academy with SaltGrain

NTT Research has launched Scale Academy, a startup incubator in Silicon Valley, and introduced SaltGrain as its first product.

Based within NTT Research, the incubator is designed to bring technologies from the group's research labs and wider NTT R&D operations to market. Bennett Indart, senior vice president of product innovation at NTT Research, will lead the initiative.

SaltGrain is a zero-trust data security suite built on attribute-based encryption, or ABE. According to NTT, the cryptographic approach was first outlined in a 2004 academic paper co-authored by Dr Amit Sahai of UCLA and Dr Brent Waters, now director of NTT Research's Cryptography & Information Security Lab.

The launch marks a more formal commercial step for NTT Research, which was established to pursue basic scientific research in Silicon Valley. It is now pairing that remit with a role in identifying projects with commercial potential and guiding them through the early stages of product development.

Tokyo-headquartered NTT invests about 30% of its profits in research and development each year. Scale Academy will work with technologies developed in NTT Research's four labs as well as other R&D units across the wider group.

The model mirrors structures commonly used by university incubators, venture-backed programmes and research-led companies, where separate governance and dedicated funding help early-stage ventures move faster than they might within a larger corporate structure.

"As NTT Research enters its '2.0' phase, we are launching Scale Academy to iterate and grow the most promising new NTT technologies into market success," said Kazu Gomi, President and Chief Executive Officer of NTT Research. "As the first case out of Scale Academy, we will push SaltGrain, which we believe the market is ready for. SaltGrain is a data security suite that breaks the prevailing all-or-nothing file-access paradigm, closes cybersecurity gaps and enhances privacy protection, which is much needed in the environment where AI agents are everywhere and playing a wide variety of roles."

Security focus

SaltGrain uses ABE to attach access rules directly to encrypted data rather than relying only on broader network or file-level controls. This allows more precise control over which parts of a document, image or video can be accessed by different users or systems.

NTT is positioning the product for organisations handling regulated or sensitive data, including financial services, healthcare and global technology groups. These sectors often need to share information across teams or institutions while limiting exposure of confidential material.

The suite is aimed at use cases in which AI systems and automated agents need access to information for analysis or learning, while privacy and security restrictions still apply. NTT added that recent work by its scientists has made the ABE element of SaltGrain ready for post-quantum deployment.

Indart said the incubator structure is intended to give projects more room than standard corporate performance cycles typically allow. Scale Academy will provide stage gates and seed-round funding for products developed under the programme, starting with SaltGrain.

"Business start-ups have their own rhythms and incentives that quarterly metrics miss," Indart said. "Scale Academy accommodates those realities, with SaltGrain providing a timely entrance amidst AI risk acceleration, gaps in network and identity controls and the growing need to protect data wherever it moves."

Research base

NTT Research opened its Silicon Valley offices in 2019 and now has four research groups in Sunnyvale. They focus on physics and informatics, cryptography and information security, medical and health informatics, and the physics of artificial intelligence.

The launch of Scale Academy adds an incubator layer between laboratory research and commercial rollout. For NTT, it provides a path to build a portfolio of products from technologies developed over long research cycles, including work that may have originated years before a market opportunity emerged.

SaltGrain is the first example of that approach. Its core encryption method dates back two decades, and NTT is now seeking to turn that academic work into a commercial security product for businesses facing stricter data protection demands and broader use of AI systems.

Scale Academy will support future products emerging from NTT Research and other NTT divisions, with SaltGrain serving as the first launch under the new model.