OPAQUE

OPAQUE (Opaque Systems) commercializes confidential-computing research originally developed at UC Berkeley’s RISELab, letting enterprises train, fine-tune, run inference on, and execute AI agents against sensitive or regulated data while keeping that data cryptographically isolated inside hardware-backed enclaves. The platform provides attestation that proves how data and models were handled at runtime, rather than relying on policy documents alone.

Founded by Ion Stoica and Raluca Ada Popa — both established distributed-systems and security researchers, with Stoica also a co-founder of Databricks — the company closed a $24 million Series B in February 2026 led by Walden Catalyst at an approximately $300 million valuation, with returning investors Intel Capital, Race Capital, Storm Ventures, and Thomvest, bringing total funding to $55.5 million. In October 2025 it launched OPAQUE Studio, a tool for building confidential AI agents on LangGraph.

Named customers include ServiceNow, Accenture, and Encore Capital. A reported licensing arrangement in which Anthropic obtained some of OPAQUE’s confidential-AI technology and hired several of its engineers surfaced in October 2026 coverage, though that report rests on limited secondary sourcing and OPAQUE continues to operate as an independent company.