All analysis was generated autonomously, without human review. Scores are analytical opinions drawn from the cited public sources, without hands-on testing. They are not audits, certifications, investment reports, purchasing advice, or evaluations of quality.
Opaque Systems turns the clouds' own security hardware into what it says the clouds do not sell: proof that AI ran on sensitive data without exposing it. Its platform runs AI workloads and agents inside confidential virtual machines where data stays encrypted even during processing, and exports signed evidence of what ran and which policies held. The team, out of UC Berkeley's RISELab with Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica, has raised $55.5 million, most recently in February 2026. Its biggest exposure is its suppliers: Microsoft, Google, and AWS operate that hardware and sell confidential virtual machines themselves, so the policy and audit layer Opaque adds is one bundling decision from a cloud feature. Most defensible where a buyer needs the same AI audit evidence across several clouds.
| Description | Opaque Systems sells a confidential AI platform that runs AI workloads and agents inside hardware-attested trusted execution environments in the customer's cloud, keeping data encrypted even while it is processed. | [f1] |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2021 | [f2] |
| HQ | San Francisco, California, US | [f3] |
| Funding | $55.5M total | [f2] |
| Latest funding | Series B, $24M (2026) | [f2] |
| Product | What it does |
|---|---|
| Opaque Confidential AI Platform | Confidential AI platform that runs AI agents and workloads inside hardware-attested confidential virtual machines in the customer's cloud, enforcing runtime policies and producing audit evidence. |
AI Defense Matrix
| Govern | Identify | Protect | Detect | Respond | Recover | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI-Workload Platforms Inference servers, training platforms, vector DB platforms, and the model-loading supply chain. | ||||||
| AI Orchestration Tools Agentic orchestration tools, plus their plugins, skills, hooks, system prompts, scaffolding, harnesses, configuration settings, and MCP clients on user devices. | ||||||
| AI-Generated Code Code produced by AI tools, AI-assisted reviews, AI-generated infrastructure-as-code and tests, and vibe-coded apps that bypass CI/CD. | ||||||
| AI Gateways & Routers MCP proxies and gateways, LLM routers, outbound AI-service traffic, shadow AI egress, and model-registry traffic. | ||||||
| AI Model Model weights, fine-tuning checkpoints, model cards, registries, AIBOM, and the third-party LLMs your enterprise consumes. | ||||||
| Training Data Datasets used for training, fine-tuning, and continued learning. | ||||||
| Runtime AI Data User prompts, inference inputs, RAG content, vector DB content, persistent agent memory, and interaction history. | ||||||
| AI Agent Identities AI agents as non-human principals, plus credentials, keys, permission scopes, service accounts, and delegation chains across agents and tools. |
The Opaque Confidential AI Platform runs AI agents and workloads inside hardware-attested confidential virtual machines in the customer's cloud, keeping data encrypted in memory during processing. These capabilities are mapped to the AI Defense Matrix. [f4]
How well the company can compete in its security market, scored across eight dimensions against public evidence.
| Dimension | Score |
|---|---|
| Problem Clarity How precisely the company defines its problem, with evidence the problem exists at the scale claimed. | 3/5 |
| Capability Depth How specific the technical capabilities are, with evidence beyond marketing claims such as docs, demos, and third-party validation. | 4/5 |
| Market Timing Whether the market is ready for this product, with evidence that buyers are actively seeking solutions. | 3/5 |
| Team Credibility Demonstrated domain expertise with public signals such as prior exits, publications, and industry recognition. | 4/5 |
| GTM Proof Evidence of actual traction (customers, revenue signals, partnerships) beyond stated intentions. | 3/5 |
| Funding Efficiency Whether funding matches go-to-market ambition, with signs of capital-efficient growth. | 3/5 |
| Category Clarity Whether the company creates or fits a recognizable category that buyers can quickly place in their stack. | 3/5 |
| Incumbent Defensibility How vulnerable the core value proposition is to absorption as a feature by a platform vendor. | 3/5 |
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A closer look at the company's product strategy, measuring how defensible it is against market forces and examining the eight areas behind it.
reinforce or reposition
| Dimension | Score |
|---|---|
| Value Delivery Does the product sell software as the product, or judgment, trust, or accountability with software as the delivery mechanism. | 1/3 |
| Switching Cost How expensive leaving is for a customer: data portability, integrations, learned workflows, network effects, regulatory data residency. | 2/3 |
| Compliance Moat Whether certifications, liability acceptance, or audit trails block an easy replacement. | 1/3 |
| Problem Complexity Whether the product requires ML, optimization, real-time systems, or years of specialized expertise. | 3/3 |
| Buyer Profile Whether buyers are SMB operators, mid-market IT teams, or regulated enterprises and governments with procurement gates. | 2/3 |
| Layer Whether the product is an end-user application, a platform with application features, or infrastructure other applications depend on. | 3/3 |
| Proprietary Data, Content, or IP Whether the product accumulates datasets, content licenses, or IP that a rival cannot recreate from scratch. | 1/3 |
Unlock the Full Analysis
The reasoning for the scores, the strategy deep dive, the business risks, and more. AI access comes with the purchase, so your AI tools can read the full profile too. You keep 12 months of access.
One-time purchase: $20 per profile.
UnlockReading several? Unlock the entire catalog.
| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| f1 | Opaque product page: The Confidential AI Platform (runtime, encryption in use, attestation) | official | 2026-07-03 |
| f2 | SiliconANGLE: Opaque raises $24M at $300M valuation for confidential AI platform | press | 2026-07-03 |
| f3 | TechAfrica News: OPAQUE expands confidential AI platform with acquisition from Technology Innovation Institute (TII) | press | 2026-07-03 |
| f4 | Opaque (AI Defense Matrix Catalog mapping) | other | 2026-07-03 |
| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| s1 | Opaque homepage (customer and partner logo wall image alt text, pipe-joined; Confidential Agents for RAG; Azure Marketplace debut news card, April 2025) “Wells Fargo | Encore Capital Group | Servicenow | Anthropic | Microsoft | Accenture | Ant Group | Bloomfilter | The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative” | official | 2026-07-03 |
| s2 | Opaque product page: OPAQUE Confidential Runtime and SDK (encrypted in memory, hardware-signed attestation and audit artifacts) “Control which data, models, agents, and tools can be used, at build time, deploy time, and runtime, and have those policies enforced automatically at every step of an AI workflow.” | official | 2026-07-03 |
| s3 | Opaque about page: UC Berkeley RISELab founders and leadership (founded 2021, Aaron Fulkerson CEO, Imran Siddique Chief Platform Officer) “Together, Professor Ion Stoica (also founder and chairman of Databricks), Professor Raluca Ada Popa, Dr. Rishabh Poddar, Professor Wenting Zheng, and Chester Leung created, incubated, and open-sourced the breakthrough MC2 (Multiparty Collaboration and Competition) platform” | official | 2026-07-03 |
| s4 | TechCrunch: Opaque Systems secures cash to keep data private (Kyle Wiggers, June 28, 2022, $22M Series A, total $31.6 million) “Opaque was founded by University of California, Berkeley professors Raluca Ada Popa and Ion Stoica, the co-founder of Databricks, as well as UC Berkeley graduates Rishabh Poddar, Wenting Zheng and Chester Leung.” | press | 2026-07-03 |
| s5 | SiliconANGLE (Duncan Riley, February 12, 2026): Opaque raises $24 million at $300 million valuation (Series B led by Walden Catalyst Ventures) “The new funding takes the total raised by Opaque to $55.5 million. The company's previous rounds include $9.5 million in July 2021 and $22 million in June 2022” | press | 2026-07-03 |
| s6 | Opaque newsroom: $24M Series B (customers and partners include ServiceNow, Anthropic, Encore Capital, Accenture) “This brings OPAQUE's total funding to $55.5 million and values the company at approximately $300 million post-money.” | official | 2026-07-03 |
| s7 | TechAfrica News (May 4, 2026): OPAQUE acquires cryptographic AI technologies from Abu Dhabi's Technology Innovation Institute (TII) “The acquired technologies, already validated in real-world applications, strengthen OPAQUE's platform with capabilities for confidential AI model training using techniques such as multi-party computation and fully homomorphic encryption, alongside post-quantum cryptographic protections.” | press | 2026-07-03 |
| s8 | USENIX NSDI 2017: Opaque, an oblivious and encrypted distributed analytics platform (Zheng, Popa, Stoica et al., UC Berkeley) “Opaque: An Oblivious and Encrypted Distributed Analytics Platform. Wenting Zheng, Ankur Dave, Jethro G. Beekman, Raluca Ada Popa, Joseph E. Gonzalez, and Ion Stoica, University of California, Berkeley” | research | 2026-07-03 |
| s9 | Microsoft Learn: Opaque Systems, Inc. partner page under Azure confidential computing (Opaque Workspaces, Opaque Gateway) “Opaque is the confidential AI platform unlocking sensitive data to securely accelerate AI into production. Created by world-renowned researchers at the Berkeley RISELab, Opaque's user-friendly platform empowers organizations to run cloud-scale, general purpose AI workloads on encrypted data.” | research | 2026-07-03 |
| s10 | VentureBeat (Victor Dey, June 22, 2023): Opaque Systems unveils confidential AI and analytics tools (Jay Harel, VP of product) “They comprise a privacy-preserving generative AI optimized for Microsoft Azure's Confidential Computing Cloud, and a zero-trust analytics platform: Data Clean Room (DCR).” | press | 2026-07-03 |
| s11 | MarketsandMarkets confidential computing market report: major vendors list naming Opaque Systems (US) alongside Decentriq, Edgeless Systems, and Anjuna Security “major vendors offering confidential computing across the globe are Microsoft (US), IBM (US), Intel (US), Google (US), AMD (US), Fortanix (US), AWS (US), Arm (UK), Alibaba Cloud (China), Swisscom (Switzerland)” | research | 2026-07-03 |
| s12 | Opaque newsroom: Opaque Systems named a 2023 Cool Vendor in Privacy by Gartner (vendor-displayed recognition) “Gartner, Cool Vendors in Privacy, 2023, Bart Willemsen, Bernard Woo, Nader Henein, 14 August 2023.” | official | 2026-07-03 |
| s13 | Trust surface probe (2026-07-03): trust./security. subdomains unresolvable, /trust /security /compliance 404, HTML grep found footer AICPA SOC badge, empty alt | other | 2026-07-03 |
| s14 | PR Newswire (Opaque announcement, June 3, 2026): OPAQUE names creator of Microsoft's Agent Governance Toolkit as Chief Platform Officer “Imran Siddique, the creator of Microsoft's Agent Governance Toolkit (AGT), will join the company as Chief Platform Officer. He will lead OPAQUE's engineering organization and platform strategy, working with co-founder and CTO Rishabh Poddar” | press | 2026-07-03 |
| s15 | Opaque FAQ: GPU-backed confidential computing for RAG and LLM workloads “It supports GPU-backed confidential computing environments, such as Azure's H100-enabled confidential VMs, which are engineered for secure, large-scale AI processing.” | official | 2026-07-03 |
| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| s1 | Opaque homepage (customer and partner logo wall image alt text, pipe-joined; Confidential Agents for RAG; Azure Marketplace debut news card, April 2025) “Wells Fargo | Encore Capital Group | Servicenow | Anthropic | Microsoft | Accenture | Ant Group | Bloomfilter | The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative” | official | 2026-07-03 |
| s2 | Opaque product page: OPAQUE Confidential Runtime and SDK (encrypted in memory, hardware-signed attestation and audit artifacts) “Control which data, models, agents, and tools can be used, at build time, deploy time, and runtime, and have those policies enforced automatically at every step of an AI workflow.” | official | 2026-07-03 |
| s3 | Opaque about page: UC Berkeley RISELab founders and leadership (founded 2021, Aaron Fulkerson CEO, Imran Siddique Chief Platform Officer) “Together, Professor Ion Stoica (also founder and chairman of Databricks), Professor Raluca Ada Popa, Dr. Rishabh Poddar, Professor Wenting Zheng, and Chester Leung created, incubated, and open-sourced the breakthrough MC2 (Multiparty Collaboration and Competition) platform” | official | 2026-07-03 |
| s4 | TechCrunch: Opaque Systems secures cash to keep data private (Kyle Wiggers, June 28, 2022, $22M Series A, total $31.6 million) “Opaque was founded by University of California, Berkeley professors Raluca Ada Popa and Ion Stoica, the co-founder of Databricks, as well as UC Berkeley graduates Rishabh Poddar, Wenting Zheng and Chester Leung.” | press | 2026-07-03 |
| s5 | SiliconANGLE (Duncan Riley, February 12, 2026): Opaque raises $24 million at $300 million valuation (Series B led by Walden Catalyst Ventures) “The new funding takes the total raised by Opaque to $55.5 million. The company's previous rounds include $9.5 million in July 2021 and $22 million in June 2022” | press | 2026-07-03 |
| s6 | Opaque newsroom: $24M Series B (customers and partners include ServiceNow, Anthropic, Encore Capital, Accenture) “This brings OPAQUE's total funding to $55.5 million and values the company at approximately $300 million post-money.” | official | 2026-07-03 |
| s7 | TechAfrica News (May 4, 2026): OPAQUE acquires cryptographic AI technologies from Abu Dhabi's Technology Innovation Institute (TII) “The acquired technologies, already validated in real-world applications, strengthen OPAQUE's platform with capabilities for confidential AI model training using techniques such as multi-party computation and fully homomorphic encryption, alongside post-quantum cryptographic protections.” | press | 2026-07-03 |
| s8 | USENIX NSDI 2017: Opaque, an oblivious and encrypted distributed analytics platform (Zheng, Popa, Stoica et al., UC Berkeley) “Opaque: An Oblivious and Encrypted Distributed Analytics Platform. Wenting Zheng, Ankur Dave, Jethro G. Beekman, Raluca Ada Popa, Joseph E. Gonzalez, and Ion Stoica, University of California, Berkeley” | research | 2026-07-03 |
| s9 | Microsoft Learn: Opaque Systems, Inc. partner page under Azure confidential computing (Opaque Workspaces, Opaque Gateway) “Opaque is the confidential AI platform unlocking sensitive data to securely accelerate AI into production. Created by world-renowned researchers at the Berkeley RISELab, Opaque's user-friendly platform empowers organizations to run cloud-scale, general purpose AI workloads on encrypted data.” | research | 2026-07-03 |
| s10 | VentureBeat (Victor Dey, June 22, 2023): Opaque Systems unveils confidential AI and analytics tools (Jay Harel, VP of product) “They comprise a privacy-preserving generative AI optimized for Microsoft Azure's Confidential Computing Cloud, and a zero-trust analytics platform: Data Clean Room (DCR).” | press | 2026-07-03 |
| s11 | MarketsandMarkets confidential computing market report: major vendors list naming Opaque Systems (US) alongside Decentriq, Edgeless Systems, and Anjuna Security “major vendors offering confidential computing across the globe are Microsoft (US), IBM (US), Intel (US), Google (US), AMD (US), Fortanix (US), AWS (US), Arm (UK), Alibaba Cloud (China), Swisscom (Switzerland)” | research | 2026-07-03 |
| s12 | Opaque newsroom: Opaque Systems named a 2023 Cool Vendor in Privacy by Gartner (vendor-displayed recognition) “Gartner, Cool Vendors in Privacy, 2023, Bart Willemsen, Bernard Woo, Nader Henein, 14 August 2023.” | official | 2026-07-03 |
| s13 | Trust surface probe (2026-07-03): trust./security. subdomains unresolvable, /trust /security /compliance 404, HTML grep found footer AICPA SOC badge, empty alt | other | 2026-07-03 |
| s14 | PR Newswire (Opaque announcement, June 3, 2026): OPAQUE names creator of Microsoft's Agent Governance Toolkit as Chief Platform Officer “Imran Siddique, the creator of Microsoft's Agent Governance Toolkit (AGT), will join the company as Chief Platform Officer. He will lead OPAQUE's engineering organization and platform strategy, working with co-founder and CTO Rishabh Poddar” | press | 2026-07-03 |
| s15 | Opaque FAQ: GPU-backed confidential computing for RAG and LLM workloads “It supports GPU-backed confidential computing environments, such as Azure's H100-enabled confidential VMs, which are engineered for secure, large-scale AI processing.” | official | 2026-07-03 |
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