Anthropic Acquires Confidential AI Startup Opaque Systems

What happened

Artificial Intelligence Anthropic Acquires Confidential AI Startup Opaque Systems Opaque Systems has developed technology that lets AI systems use sensitive data while keeping it protected by the underlying hardware. Opaque announced the deal last week, saying its team is joining Anthropic.

Opaque started as a research project at UC Berkeley’s RISELab a decade ago. Aaron Fulkerson joined as CEO in October 2023. The company turned its confidential computing research into technology used in production AI deployments. Opaque this year raised a $24 million Series B (an early stage of company funding) round at a $300 million valuation. Anthropic is an artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco. Opaque Systems has developed technology that lets AI systems use sensitive data while keeping it protected by the underlying hardware. Its founders include Ion Stoica, co-founder of Databricks and Anyscale, and Raluca Ada Popa, an encryption (scrambling data so only the holder of the key can read it) and systems security researcher who now works at Google DeepMind. Over time, it broadened that work beyond protecting data and models. Opaque also worked with the wider community on open projects that address trust and security for AI agents (AI that carries out multi-step tasks rather than answering one question) and models.