We have released Lattica’s 2nd FHE Landscape Survey. We surveyed cryptographers, engineers, and researchers to understand where fully homomorphic encryption is headed.
Highlights from the report are below. Download the full PDF from the link at the end of the article for methodology and complete findings.
Key takeaways
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CKKS leads the market
CKKS is now the leading scheme in today’s market. This has changed since last year’s survey, where TFHE was #1, and is a reflection of CKKS’s strengths when working with machine learning applications.
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Top commercial use cases
The top commercial use cases have also changed from last year’s survey, and are:
a. Cross-organizational / cross-border collaboration
b. “Private LLMs,” aka Small Language Models
c. Biometric authentication and facial recognition
d. Smart contracts
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Hardware and software together
And finally, most respondents continue to believe FHE adoption will be achieved through a combination of hardware and software.
2026 Top Commercial Use Cases
CKKS Leads the Way
Privacy Pressure Is Industry-Agnostic
OpenFHE continues to dominate the market, followed by TFHE-rs.
FPGAs and ASICs: A Matter of When, Not If
Primary driver of widespread FHE adoption
Privacy Tech Is Converging
Read the full report
Download the PDF for methodology, full charts, and context. You can also compare with our 2025 community survey or browse more news from Lattica.