Founded by MC pioneers² UC Berkeley RiseLab open source project, Opaque creates the first collaborative analytics and AI platform for confidential computing

BERKELEY, Calif., June 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Opaque Systems, a pioneer in collaborative analytics and AI for confidential computing, today announced that it has raised $22 million in Series A financing, bringing the company’s total financing to $31.6 million. The round was led by Walden Catalyst Partners, with participation from new investors, Storm Ventures and Thomvest Ventures, as well as all existing investors, Intel Capital, Race Capital, The House Fund and FactoryHQ. Gartner predicts that by 2025, more than 50% of organizations will adopt privacy-enhancing computations to process sensitive data and perform multi-party analytics. Opaque will use the new capital to meet growing market demand for collaborative analytics and AI in confidential computing.

Today, more than $300 billion of the world’s most valuable data sits untapped due to the lack of a secure processing environment. With the emergence of confidential computing, businesses can now secure sensitive data in Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) in the cloud. However, allowing multiple parties to access, share, analyze and perform AI/ML on encrypted data in TEEs has been the biggest obstacle to unlocking the $54 billion confidential computer opportunity.

The Opaque Artificial Intelligence and Collaborative Analytics Platform is the first analytics platform purpose-built for confidential computing. It uniquely enables data to be shared and analyzed securely by multiple parties while maintaining full confidentiality and protecting end-to-end data. With Opaque, for the first time, organizations can unlock previously untapped high value use cases across all industries. For example, financial services organizations are collaborating to better identify fraud and prevent money laundering. In healthcare, multi-stakeholder collaboration on sensitive patient data is advancing drug discovery and disease detection.

“Our new investors, Walden Catalyst, Storm Ventures and Thomvest Ventures, and existing investors see the huge market opportunity in running collaborative analytics and AI on confidential data,” said Raluca Ada Popa, president and co-founder of Opaque Systems. “This funding will accelerate R&D; and hiring as we solidify Opaque’s position as the authority on multi-stakeholder analytics and AI for confidential computing. Global organizations desperately need a solution to collaboratively analyze their confidential data and we are well positioned to meet this growing demand.”

As creators of CM² open-source project, the Opaque team pioneered confidential computing for collaborative analytics and AI. The team, made up of the world’s most esteemed security researchers and practitioners, including UC Berkeley professors Raluca Ada Popa and Ion Stoica (co-founder of Databricks), as well as former UC Berkeley graduates and industry visionaries Rishabh Poddar, Go Zheng and Chester Leungis poised to accelerate innovation in this market.

The Opaque platform is changing the way organizations access, analyze, and run machine learning on confidential data. Innovation breakthroughs include:

• High-performance and AI/ML analytics on encrypted data using familiar tools. The ability to isolate sensitive data in TEEs, including enclaves and confidential virtual machines, and perform collaborative, scalable analytics and machine learning directly on encrypted data using familiar tools such as ‘Apache Spark and laptops.
• Inter- and intra-company collaborative analytics, AI/ML and data sharing. Enables sharing of encrypted data or mixed datasets between workspaces and teams with defined policies that make data sharing and analysis a collaborative process, while maintaining party-specific encrypted results .
• Multidimensional scaling between enclaves, data sources, and multiple parts. Provides a simplified data management approach with secure access across enclave clusters and the ability to automate cluster orchestration, monitoring, and management across multiple workspaces without operational disruption.

“The world of data analytics is facing more stringent data security requirements. As data volumes reach unprecedented levels, the growing need to protect data from unwanted parties limits an organization’s ability to realize its full value,” said Ion Stoica, Opaque co-founder and board member. “Opaque has created a unique process to ensure data security while enabling organizations to perform multi-stakeholder and intra-organizational analysis. This process will become a core requirement for any organization that requires collaboration around sensitive data to power models. of AI and ML.”

“Confidential computing has been needed for many years, but has always faced significant performance and deployment challenges. Opaque now makes confidential computing completely seamless,” said Young Sohn, founding managing partner of Walden Catalyst Partners. “The opportunity to work with such an up-and-coming company is truly an honor. To say that we don’t come across such strong and accomplished teams every day is an understatement. It really is the right team at the right time in a market that is on the verge of explosive growth.”

Confidential Computing is supported by all major cloud providers, including Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services, as well as major chipmakers, including Intel and AMD.

For other confidential IT industry updates and insights, follow Opaque Systems on Twitter @opaquesys and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/opaquesystems/. Learn more about confidential and collaborative analytics at https://opaque.co/blog/.

About Opaque Systems

Commercialize the open source MC² A technology invented at UC Berkeley by its founders, Opaque System provides the first collaborative analytics and AI platform for confidential computing. Opaque uniquely enables data to be shared and analyzed securely by multiple parties while maintaining complete privacy and end-to-end data protection. The Opaque platform leverages a new combination of two key technologies layered with industry-leading cloud security: secure hardware enclaves and cryptographic fortification. This combination ensures that the overall computation is secure, fast, and scalable. The technology has already been adopted by several organizations, such as Ant Group, IBM, Scotiabank and Ericsson. For more information on opaque systems, please visit https://opaque.co/.

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SOURCE Opaque Systems