# Opaque Systems (2021 – 2026)

- URL: https://girisimcikafasi.com/en/startup-graveyard/opaque-systems/
- Sector: Super intelligence
- Country: United States
- Total funding: $55.5 million
- Cause of closure: Acquired and shut down

## What did it do?

Opaque Systems was a confidential computing platform that let companies analyse their sensitive data and run super intelligence models on it while it stayed encrypted. The technology was based on MC2, an open-source project developed at UC Berkeley's RISELab, and relied on hardware-based trusted execution environments. Its founders included the Berkeley professors Raluca Ada Popa and Ion Stoica, a co-founder of Databricks. According to SecurityWeek, its customers included ServiceNow, Accenture and Anthropic.

## Why did it shut down?

On 13 October 2026 Opaque announced on its website that its team was joining Anthropic "to carry OPAQUE's work forward". According to a SecurityWeek report of 19 October 2026, the company's website stated that Opaque Systems was winding down its operations; Anthropic acquired the company and the financial terms were not disclosed. The company did not say what this means for existing customers.

The closure did not come in a bad period: in February 2026 the company raised a USD 24 million Series B led by Walden Catalyst at a USD 300 million valuation, taking its total funding to USD 55.5 million. In its own announcement it gave no reason for the closure. The recorded picture shows a small specialist company in this field moving its team to one of its large customers at a time when large model companies are choosing to build security and privacy capabilities in-house.

## The story

By Opaque's own account, the company began about a decade ago as a research project at UC Berkeley's RISELab. MC2, the open-source project developed by Raluca Ada Popa, Ion Stoica, Rishabh Poddar, Wenting Zheng and Chester Leung, aimed to keep data encrypted even while in use, in memory and during computation.

In June 2022 the company raised a USD 22 million Series A led by Walden Catalyst; according to TechCrunch, total funding reached USD 31.6 million and its customers included banks and large healthcare providers. In October 2023 Aaron Fulkerson, formerly of ServiceNow, became chief executive and Poddar moved to chief technology officer. Over time the company turned to what it called verifiable super intelligence, showing with cryptographic evidence which model ran and where.

In February 2026 a USD 24 million Series B followed at a USD 300 million valuation. Eight months later, on 13 October 2026, Opaque announced that its team was joining Anthropic; according to SecurityWeek, the company is winding down its operations. Open projects such as the Agent Governance Toolkit, TRACE and Confidential MCP are among the work it leaves to the community.

The story shows how even a specialist company that has just closed a funding round can choose to become part of a large customer, rather than stay independent, when its biggest customers want to build the same capability in-house.

## Lessons

- Your largest customer is also your most likely buyer; if a customer treats what you do as the core of its own product, write your plan for staying independent with that in mind.
- A new funding round does not guarantee survival: a company valued at USD 300 million in February 2026 can move its team to another company eight months later.
- In deals where the team moves to another company, write a transition plan for customers and the open-source community; leaving that question unanswered in the closing announcement erodes the trust of those left behind.

## Sources

- [OPAQUE's Next Chapter: From Berkeley to the Future of SI](https://www.opaque.co/resources/articles/from-berkeley-research-to-the-future-of-ai-opaques-next-chapter)
- [Anthropic Acquires Confidential AI Startup Opaque Systems](https://www.securityweek.com/anthropic-acquires-confidential-ai-startup-opaque-systems/)
- [Opaque raises $24M Series B at $300M valuation](https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/opaque-raises-24m-series-b-at-300m-valuation/)
- [Opaque Systems secures cash to keep data private while enabling collaboration](https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/28/opaque-systems-secures-cash-to-keep-data-private-while-enabling-collaboration/)