New capabilities make it possible to safely deploy AI agents on the most sensitive and regulated data — with hardware-enforced, verifiable rules and cryptographic guarantees built to withstand quantum computing
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. and ABU DHABI, UAE, May 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — OPAQUE, the Confidential AI company headquartered in San Francisco, California, today announced it has acquired advanced cryptographic AI technologies from the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), the applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC). The acquired technology — already proven in real-world use cases — adds two critical capabilities to OPAQUE’s platform: confidential AI model training powered by advanced cryptographic techniques such as multi-party computation and fully homomorphic encryption, as well as post-quantum cryptographic protections.
Founded by researchers from UC Berkeley’s RISELab, and now with this acquisition, OPAQUE supports Confidential AI workflows across training and inference, moving enterprises from isolated AI experiments to production deployment 4-5x faster.
The acquisition was overseen by H.E. Faisal Al Bannai, Adviser to UAE President His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Secretary General of ATRC, and Ion Stoica, Co-Founder and Board Member of OPAQUE, Co-Founder of Databricks, and Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley. It marks the first time cryptographic AI technologies developed in the UAE have been acquired and deployed at scale by a US-based technology company.
“This acquisition reflects what the UAE has set out to do — produce foundational technology that the world adopts,” said H.E. Faisal Al Bannai, Adviser to the UAE President and Secretary General of ATRC. “Cryptographic AI capabilities developed in Abu Dhabi are now being deployed at global scale by a leading US technology company. The UAE is not only adopting the AI economy — we are leading. ATRC will continue to invest in the research that defines the next generation of trusted AI.”
“The future of AI depends on unlocking the data organizations have never been able to touch,” said Ion Stoica, Co-Founder of OPAQUE. “Most enterprises sit on a corpus of data too sensitive to use and too valuable to ignore. With this acquisition, OPAQUE is the only platform delivering hardware-attested cryptographic evidence across the full AI lifecycle — training, fine-tuning, inference, and agents — with protections engineered to withstand quantum-era threats. That combination doesn’t exist anywhere else in the market today.”
“AI agents are extraordinarily powerful: they operate at machine speed with human-like capabilities, delivering in days what entire teams would struggle to complete in a year,” said Aaron Fulkerson, Chief Executive Officer of OPAQUE. “That same power is exactly why they are so difficult to move into production. An agent connected to sensitive systems or regulated data — patient records, clinical research, financial claims — can do damage in days that a team of malicious actors couldn’t match in a year. The only way to safely deploy them is with hardware-enforced, verifiable rules: provable evidence of what ran, where it ran, and which rules were enforced. Building on primitives from every major cloud provider, OPAQUE makes it possible to move agents into production — even on the most sensitive and most regulated systems and data.”
Enterprises sit on vast amounts of sensitive data — patient records, financial transactions, classified intelligence, proprietary research — that could transform their AI capabilities. But using that data across the full AI lifecycle has required stitching together point solutions from multiple vendors, each covering a different phase: one for training, another for inference, another for agent workflows. The result is gaps, complexity, and risk that compliance teams won’t sign off on.
OPAQUE eliminates those gaps. The acquired technology extends OPAQUE’s confidential AI platform across training, fine-tuning, inference, and AI agent execution. It delivers verifiable guarantees at every stage, backed by post-quantum cryptography that protects workloads against current and future threats. For example, ServiceNow runs OPAQUE in production to extend AI capabilities to its enterprise customers without exposing their data. A national healthcare system can train diagnostic models on patient data across jurisdictions, run inference across facilities, and deploy AI agents on live clinical data — all on a single platform. The platform generates hardware-attested evidence aligned with SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, GDPR Article 32, and EU AI Act high-risk obligations, proving data remained private, policies were enforced, and regulatory requirements were met.
Critically, OPAQUE’s architecture means cryptographic enforcement is rooted in hardware, not in vendor trust. Customer data — including data processed by sovereign AI programs and regulated enterprises — remains protected by Trusted Execution Environments and verifiable attestation that even OPAQUE itself cannot access. This makes the platform deployable on sovereign cloud infrastructure worldwide with cryptographic proof of data residency, enabling national AI programs to adopt confidential AI without surrendering on-soil data control or jurisdictional sovereignty.
Across high-stakes industries, the same challenges arise wherever AI systems rely on sensitive data: banks training fraud models across regulatory jurisdictions, defense contractors fine-tuning on classified intelligence, software vendors embedding AI into products that touch customer data.
The acquisition follows OPAQUE’s $24 million Series B at a $300 million valuation and builds on a customer base that includes ServiceNow, Anthropic, Accenture, and Encore Capital. With the acquired technology, OPAQUE supports Confidential AI workflows across training, fine-tuning, inference, and agents — moving enterprises and sovereign AI programs from isolated experiments to production deployment 4-5x faster, with verifiable security and post-quantum protection.
For TII and ATRC, the transaction validates a deliberate strategy: invest in foundational cryptography research, prove it on world-class large language models, then deliver it globally through partners with the platform and customer base to scale it. Foundational AI technology developed in Abu Dhabi will now be deployed across financial services, healthcare, government, and enterprise SaaS — on every continent — with the UAE established as a producer of the cryptographic infrastructure powering the next generation of trusted AI.
“We developed these cryptographic technologies to address a fundamental challenge in AI: how to enable powerful models to work with highly sensitive data without compromising confidentiality or trust,” said Dr. Najwa Aaraj, Chief Executive Officer of TII. “OPAQUE was the right partner to bring this to market because it has already built the enterprise platform and customer base to deploy it at scale. This is what applied research is for — foundational technology developed in Abu Dhabi, now moving from the lab into real-world global deployment.”
About OPAQUE
OPAQUE is the Confidential AI company. Born from UC Berkeley’s RISELab, OPAQUE solves the core challenge blocking AI adoption at scale: concerns about data leaks and compliance violations. OPAQUE provides verifiable privacy and governance for AI so organizations can safely run models, agents, and workflows on their most sensitive data. Its Confidential AI platform delivers verifiable runtime governance backed by cryptographic proof that data, models, and agent actions remain private, governed, and compliant with approved policies throughout every AI workflow. OPAQUE is also the host of the industry’s Confidential Computing Summit. Customers and partners include ServiceNow, Anthropic, Encore Capital, Accenture, and leaders across high tech, financial services, insurance, and healthcare. Learn more at opaque.co.
About Technology Innovation Institute (TII)
The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) is the dedicated applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC). TII is a pioneering global research and development center that focuses on applied research and new-age technology capabilities. The Institute has 9 dedicated research centers in advanced materials, autonomous robotics, cryptography, AI and digital science, directed energy, quantum, secure systems, propulsion and space, and renewable and sustainable energy. For more information, visit www.tii.ae
Media Contact
tii@edelman.com
For OPAQUE
opaquesystems@inkhouse.com
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