Anthropic Acquires Confidential AI Startup Opaque Systems

Anthropic has acquired Opaque Systems, a company that developed technology for using sensitive data in AI systems while keeping it protected by the underlying hardware. Opaque announced the deal last week, saying its team is joining Anthropic. Financial terms were not disclosed. Opaque started as a research project at UC Berkeley’s RISELab a decade ago. Its founders include Ion Stoica, co-founder of Databricks and Anyscale, and Raluca Ada Popa, an encryption and systems security researcher who now works at Google DeepMind. Aaron Fulkerson joined as CEO in October 2023. The company turned its confidential computing research into technology used in production AI deployments. Over time, it broadened that work beyond protecting data and models. “As AI evolved, so did the problem we set out to solve. Protecting data and models was no longer enough. Organizations also needed a way to independently verify how AI systems and agents behaved,” Opaque said. “That led us to expand our work from confidential AI to verifiable AI: replacing trust assumptions with cryptographic evidence of what ran, where it ran, and under what policies,” the company added. Opaque also worked with the wider community on open projects that address trust and security for AI agents and models. These include the Agent Governance Toolkit, TRACE, Confidential MCP and Weight Custody Manifest. Opaque this year raised a $24 million Series B round at a $300 million valuation. The company listed Anthropic among its customers, alongside ServiceNow and Accenture. Opaque’s website now states that its team “is joining Anthropic to carry our work forward, and Opaque Systems is winding down its operations.” The company has not said what the wind-down means for its existing customers. Related: Proofpoint Inks $6.3 Billion All-Cash Deal to Acquire Varonis Related: IonQ to Acquire Zero Trust Firm Elisity for Up to $1.3 Billion Related: Cybersecurity M&A Roundup: 39 Deals Announced in September 2026