NTT Analysis Launches Scale Academy and SaltGrain, New Quantum-Secure Safety Platform

NTT Analysis used Improve 2026 to launch Scale Academy, a brand new incubator targeted on turning inside analysis into services and products, and launched SaltGrain, its first safety platform constructed on attribute-based encryption.

I’m masking Improve 2026, NTT Analysis’s annual occasion, going down April 15-16 on the Signia by Hilton San Jose. For extra info on the occasion itself, read my earlier article.

Scale Academy

Scale Academy is the construction NTT Analysis is utilizing to maneuver chosen applied sciences out of NTT Analysis labs and broader NTT R&D into commercialization. NTT Analysis has operated since 2019 with a concentrate on primary analysis, however after seven years, a few of its applied sciences have superior sufficient to assist product growth and enterprise incubation.

The brand new group is led by Bennett Indart, NTT Analysis’s SVP of Product Innovation. Its position is to establish promising applied sciences, incubate them, develop market positioning, construct partnerships, and put together them for launch. The mannequin additionally opens the door to exterior partnerships and outdoors funding, a broader strategy than NTT’s extra inside growth model.

NTT Analysis by the numbers

“Taking primary analysis, principle, papers, and patents and turning them into one thing folks really need to use of their each day lives is one other problem altogether,” mentioned Bennett Indart, Senior Vice President of Product Innovation at NTT Analysis.

Scale Academy will begin by working with applied sciences developed inside NTT fairly than working as an out of doors accelerator. SaltGrain is already on a spinout path, and NTT Analysis plans to handle the method with milestones and funding gates because it builds a repeatable commercialization mannequin.

“There will likely be milestones, there will likely be funding gates, and if we are able to’t attain these, then laborious choices should be made,” mentioned Indart.

The primary product to emerge from Scale Academy is SaltGrain, a zero-trust knowledge safety suite for enterprises dealing with high-value or regulated info. It’s constructed on attribute-based encryption, or ABE, a cryptographic scheme first launched in a 2004 paper co-authored by UCLA’s Dr. Amit Sahai and Dr. Brent Waters, now director of NTT Analysis’s Cryptography and Data Safety Lab. The identify combines “Salt,” which references stronger hash-based safety, with “Grain,” which displays ABE’s granular strategy to knowledge entry management.

NTT Analysis has been creating the business path for ABE over a number of years. The corporate offered use circumstances for the expertise at Improve 2024, moved to a number of prototypes final yr, and is now utilizing Scale Academy to speed up SaltGrain’s commercialization.

SaltGrain

SaltGrain attaches entry coverage on to encrypted knowledge. Meaning safety stays with the information all through its lifecycle, fairly than relying solely on perimeter defenses or broad file-level permissions. The platform is designed for environments the place knowledge strikes throughout organizations, groups, techniques, and AI-driven workflows.

“Regardless of the place the information goes, the safety and entry management go together with it all through the information lifecycle. Even when the unhealthy actor hacked by means of the system-based safety and will steal the information, the information continues to be protected. The information turns into ineffective,” mentioned Fang Wu, Vice President of Enterprise Improvement at NTT Analysis.

SaltGrain permits extra granular management over entry to delicate parts of paperwork and knowledge. It’s meant to assist safe sharing of textual content, picture, and video recordsdata whereas defending particular content material inside them. The platform is aimed toward organizations in sectors equivalent to monetary providers, healthcare, authorities, and enormous expertise environments, the place collaboration is important however the price of a knowledge breach might be excessive.

A serious a part of the product’s relevance is the rise of AI. As extra AI techniques and brokers achieve entry to enterprise paperwork and knowledge, the assault floor expands. SaltGrain is designed to guard knowledge on the knowledge layer itself, which is more and more vital when info is being shared for evaluation, automation, and machine-driven workflows.

NTT Analysis can be positioning SaltGrain for AI-agent workflows, the place enterprises might have to provide AI techniques entry to massive doc units that additionally comprise non-public or regulated info. The platform is designed to assist shield each the enter knowledge utilized by these techniques and the outputs they generate.

“As these paperwork might comprise a substantial amount of non-public info, SaltGrain will play an vital position in defending that knowledge,” mentioned Kazu Gomi, President and CEO of NTT Analysis.

The platform can be constructed for post-quantum deployment. NTT Analysis has superior the underlying ABE implementation to function with post-quantum safety whereas sustaining robust efficiency. That offers SaltGrain a task not simply in present enterprise safety, but additionally in longer-term cryptographic planning as organizations put together for a quantum period.

SaltGrain can be being developed so customers shouldn’t have to handle the complexity of the underlying cryptography straight. An AI-enabled knowledge classification engine is a part of the platform path, serving to enterprises find delicate knowledge and decide the way it needs to be protected. That issues as a result of many organizations nonetheless have no idea precisely the place their most delicate info resides.

NTT Analysis has beforehand licensed ABE throughout the NTT group, resulting in a number of proofs of idea. Scale Academy is now consolidating these efforts right into a single incubation path to push the expertise additional towards market adoption.

For extra info on Scale Academy, go to NTT Research’s dedicated page or attend Upgrade 2026, NTT’s two-day occasion in San Jose, the place the corporate is highlighting how scientific discoveries and superior ideas are transferring towards real-world merchandise and techniques. The occasion consists of keynotes, panel classes, and an expo with more than 30 exhibits from NTT corporations around the globe.