The deal marks a significant milestone in the evolution of Confidential AI, extending OPAQUE’s platform across the full AI lifecycle, including training, fine-tuning, inference, and agent execution.
OPAQUE, the Confidential AI company headquartered in San Francisco, has announced the acquisition of advanced cryptographic AI technologies from the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), the applied research arm of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC). 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.
The deal marks a significant milestone in the evolution of Confidential AI, extending OPAQUE’s platform across the full AI lifecycle, including training, fine-tuning, inference, and agent execution. Founded by researchers from UC Berkeley’s RISELab, OPAQUE aims to help enterprises move from isolated AI experimentation to production deployment significantly faster, claiming improvements of up to 4–5x in deployment speed.
The acquisition was overseen by H.E. Faisal Al Bannai, Adviser to the UAE President and Secretary General of ATRC, and Ion Stoica, Co-Founder and Board Member of OPAQUE and Professor at UC Berkeley. It is also the first instance of cryptographic AI technologies developed in the UAE being acquired and deployed at global scale by a US-based technology company, underscoring the UAE’s growing role in foundational AI research and innovation.
Speaking on the deal, H.E. Faisal Al Bannai highlighted that the transaction reflects the UAE’s ambition to develop foundational technologies adopted globally, emphasizing ATRC’s continued investment in next-generation trusted AI systems. Ion Stoica noted that the future of AI depends on unlocking sensitive enterprise data securely, and described OPAQUE as uniquely positioned to provide cryptographic guarantees across the entire AI lifecycle, including protections designed for the post-quantum era.
OPAQUE CEO Aaron Fulkerson added that while AI agents offer significant productivity gains, they also introduce new risks when connected to sensitive systems. He emphasized that OPAQUE’s platform enables the safe deployment of AI agents through hardware-enforced, verifiable controls that provide cryptographic evidence of execution and policy enforcement, even in highly regulated environments.
Enterprises across industries such as healthcare, financial services, defense, and software development increasingly face challenges in securely using sensitive data for AI. OPAQUE’s platform aims to address this by eliminating fragmented point solutions and providing a unified system that ensures confidentiality and compliance throughout the AI lifecycle. The system generates hardware-attested evidence aligned with major regulatory frameworks, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR Article 32, and the EU AI Act.
The platform is already being used in production by organizations such as ServiceNow, enabling secure AI deployment without exposing sensitive customer data. With the new acquisition, OPAQUE expands its ability to support sovereign cloud deployments, ensuring data residency and jurisdictional control through hardware-based trust mechanisms that even OPAQUE itself cannot access.
The transaction follows OPAQUE’s $24 million Series B funding round at a $300 million valuation and builds on partnerships with companies including ServiceNow, Anthropic, Accenture, and Encore Capital. The company says the integration of TII’s cryptographic technologies will further accelerate its mission to bring Confidential AI from experimentation to large-scale enterprise deployment.
For TII and ATRC, the deal represents validation of their research-driven strategy, where foundational cryptographic innovations developed in Abu Dhabi are transitioned into global commercial deployment. Leaders at TII emphasized that the partnership with OPAQUE enables real-world application of advanced research, positioning the UAE as an emerging producer of core technologies powering the next generation of trusted AI systems. TechAfrica News
