Malta Strengthens Its Position In Europe's Strategic Technology Ecosystem

Trust Stamp, a Nasdaq-listed identity technology company that specialises in privacy-first biometric authentication, has announced that its Maltese subsidiary, Trust Stamp Malta Limited, has been selected as a direct participant in the Important Project of Common European Interest on Advanced Semiconductor Technologies, known as IPCEI AST.

The initiative is a major coordinated European programme aimed at strengthening the continent's security and resilience across the advanced semiconductor value chain. The selection was backed by Malta Enterprise.

The IPCEI AST brings together industry and research participants to speed up the development of next-generation chip technologies. It is one of the European Union's principal instruments for funding strategic technologies, and its predecessor in microelectronics mobilised up to 8.1 billion euros in public funding across fourteen Member States.

Trust Stamp will bring its privacy-first identity technology to the project. Its work binds the identity of a device to a verified human identity, so that it can be trusted to operate only in authorised hands. 

This builds on the company's approach to biometric tokenisation, which protects personal data while enabling secure authentication.

The company's participation is anchored by two cooperation agreements planned to run from 2027 to 2032, subject to formal approval. The first is a secure semiconductor identity platform that links device identity to a verified human identity. The second explores how AI can help process sensitive neural data from a new chip platform, while keeping the data secure through verified device authentication. 

Berta Pappenheim, a Trust Stamp Executive Director and the project lead, described the selection as an important milestone. She said it allows the company to work alongside strong international partners and to explore the emerging field of brain-computer interfaces. She thanked Malta Enterprise for the support making Malta's contribution possible.