Tiempo Secure was founded in 2007 by two French engineers; Serge Maginot, and Marc Renaudin, respectively former Director of R&D with Synopsys Inc. and Professor at Grenoble INP, and Head of Research at TIMA Laboratory. Initially focusing their efforts on developing a solution for innovative clockless design, the co-founders rapidly redirected their efforts towards secure designs, and specifically secure microcontroller chip designs, for secure payment and identity applications in the smartcard industry.