OPAQUE, a San Francisco-based confidential AI company, has acquired advanced cryptographic AI technologies from the Technology Innovation Institute, the applied research arm of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council. The deal extends OPAQUE’s platform across the full AI lifecycle, covering training, fine-tuning, inference, and agent execution, and marks the first time cryptographic AI technologies developed in the UAE have been acquired and deployed at global scale by a US-based technology company.
The acquired technologies bring capabilities for confidential AI model training using multi-party computation and fully homomorphic encryption, alongside post-quantum cryptographic protections. OPAQUE, which was founded by researchers from UC Berkeley’s RISELab, says the additions will help enterprises move from isolated AI experimentation to production deployment up to four to five times faster.
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. Al Bannai said the transaction reflects the UAE’s ambition to develop foundational technologies adopted globally. Stoica said 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 said AI agents introduce new risks when connected to sensitive systems, and that the platform enables safe deployment through hardware-enforced, verifiable controls that provide cryptographic evidence of execution and policy enforcement, including in highly regulated environments. The platform is already in production use at ServiceNow and is built to align with major regulatory frameworks including SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR Article 32, and the EU AI Act.
The transaction follows OPAQUE’s $24 million Series B funding round at a $300 million valuation and builds on existing partnerships with ServiceNow, Anthropic, Accenture, and Encore Capital.
