Highlights:

  • More than USD 300 billion of the world’s most valuable data remains untapped due to the absence of a secure processing environment.
  • All major cloud vendors support confidential computing, including Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and other significant chip manufacturers like Intel and AMD.

Opaque Systems, one of the pioneers of collaborative analytics and AI for confidential computing, recently announced that it has raised USD 22 million in Series A funding. With the recent round of funding, the California-based company has accumulated USD 31.6 million.

This round was led by Walden Catalyst Partners, with involvement from new investors, Storm Ventures and Thomvest Ventures, including existing investors, Intel Capital, Race Capital, The House Fund, and FactoryHQ.

According to Gartner, by 2025, over 50% of the organizations will adopt privacy-enhancing computation to process sensitive data and conduct multi-party analytics.

Opaque Systems will utilize the new capital to cater to an accelerating market demand for collaborative analytics and AI in confidentiality.

Today, more than USD 300 billion of the world’s most valuable data remains untapped due to the absence of a secure processing environment.

With the arrival of confidential computing, organizations can now secure sensitive data in Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) in the cloud.

Sadly, enabling multiple parties to access, share, analyze, and run AI/ML on encrypted data in TEEs has been the biggest obstacle to unlocking the USD 54 billion confidential computing opportunity. Raluca Ada Popa, president and co-founder of Opaque Systems said, “Our new investors, Walden Catalyst, Storm Ventures, and Thomvest Ventures, and existing investors see the enormous market opportunity in performing collaborative analytics and AI on confidential data. This financing will accelerate R and amp;D and hiring as we cement Opaque’s position as the authority in multi-party analytics and AI for confidential computing. Global organizations are in desperate need of a secure solution to collaboratively analyze their confidential data, and we are well-positioned to meet this growing demand.”

Being the creators of the MC2 open-source project, the computer software company pioneered confidential computing for collaborative analytics and AI.

The team includes the world’s most esteemed security researchers and practitioners. The panel consists of UC Berkeley professors Raluca Ada Popa and Ion Stoica (Co-Founder of Databricks), former UC Berkeley graduates.

It also includes industry visionaries like Rishabh Poddar, Wenting Zheng, and Chester Leung, who are expected to play a massive role in accelerating innovation in this market.

  • The Opaque platform is transforming how organizations access, analyze, and execute machine learning on confidential data. Innovation breakthroughs include high-performance analytics and AI/ML on encrypted data using familiar tools.
  • Inter- and Intra-company collaborative analytics, AI/ML, and data sharing.
  • Multi-dimensional scaling across enclaves, data sources, and multiple parties.

Experts’ Take

Ion Stoica, Opaque co-founder, and board member, said, “The world of data analytics is colliding with stricter data security requirements. As data volumes scale to unprecedented levels, the increasing need to keep data safe from unwanted parties is limiting an organization’s ability to derive its full value. Opaque has created a unique process for ensuring the security of data while still enabling organizations to perform multi-party and intra-organizational analytics. This process will become a foundational requirement at any organization that requires collaboration around sensitive data to power AI and ML models.”

Young Sohn, the founding managing partner at Walden Catalyst Partners, said, “Confidential computing has been needed for many years, but it has always faced significant performance and deployment hurdles. Opaque is now making confidential computing completely frictionless. The opportunity to work with such a promising company is truly an honor. It’s an understatement to say that we don’t come across teams that are this strong and this accomplished every day. This is truly the right team at the right time in a market poised for explosive growth.”

All major cloud vendors support confidential computing, including Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and other significant chip manufacturers like Intel and AMD.