Founders Spotlight: Opaque Systems

Opaque is fast emerging as a leader in a new category called confidential computing, which allows organizations to unlock the value of their most private data while keeping it more secure. Organizations can now protect data and applications in use by isolating sensitive data in an encrypted enclave during processing.

After raising a $9.5 million seed round in 2021 led by Intel Capital, Opaque secured $22 million in Series A funding from new investors Walden Catalyst, Storm Ventures and Thomvest Ventures. Much of that financing will go toward further developing the business, closing new customers, accelerating growth and hiring key executives and technical experts.

Enjoy their story below:

The Clear Advantage of Opaque Systems

Opaque Systems has an impressive entrepreneurial pedigree. The company is a spinout of RiseLab, the prolific open-source research lab at UC Berkeley that, over the years, has given birth to numerous cutting-edge projects and companies, including Apache Spark and Databricks. Databricks, for its part, is now one of the hottest enterprise software companies in the world, garnering a valuation of $38 billion in its last funding round.

Databricks cofounder, UC Berkley professor Ion Stoica, is also a cofounder of Opaque. He is joined by a talented founding team from Berkeley, including professors Raluca Ada Popa and Wenting Zheng, as well as their former students Rishabh Poddar and Chester Leung. This is the same team who founded the open-source project MC2, which enables multiple data owners to perform analytics and jointly train ML models on their collective data without revealing their individual data to each other.

At Opaque, the team has created a platform that further opens up the ability to perform collaborative scalable analytics while protecting data end-to-end and enabling organizations to comply with legal and regulatory mandates. Opaque leverages a novel combination of two key technologies layered on top of cloud security—secure hardware enclaves and cryptographic fortification. This combination ensures that the overall computation is secure, fast and scalable.

At its core, Opaque helps organizations analyze encrypted data in the cloud using popular tools like Apache Spark, while ensuring that their data is not exposed to the cloud provider. It also applies privacy-enhancing analytics and machine learning to confidential data regardless of where it comes from, allowing disparate organizations to better collaborate with each other, all while preserving the privacy of their confidential data.

“Opaque Systems is the right technology at the right time,” says Stoica. “It’s the right time because, on the one hand, there is more and more awareness around maintaining data privacy due to new regulations like the EU’s GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act. On the other hand, you have this push for more intelligent decision-making and insights, which requires greater access to data.”

He says Opaque is perfectly positioned to bridge this gap because it allows organizations to reap the benefits of greater data sharing while also achieving compliance with new, stricter privacy regulations.

“We saw a growing need from companies who were looking for new solutions to handle their confidential data,” says cofounder Raluca Ada Popa. “It was becoming super clear that organizations need a solution like Opaque, so transforming it from a research project at RiseLab to a standalone startup was a no-brainer.”

The rise of confidential computing

Opaque is fast emerging as a leader in a new category called confidential computing, which allows organizations to unlock the value of their most private data while keeping it more secure. Organizations can now protect data and applications in use by isolating sensitive data in an encrypted enclave during processing.

Although still in its early stages, the potential of confidential computing is tremendous, as organizations look to build resilient and secure enterprises by ensuring data integrity. The confidential computing market is forecast to grow 26X over the next five years, from about $2 billion in 2021 to $54 billion by 2026, according to Everest Research. A big part of that growth is expected to be generated by multiparty computing, which is Opaque’s area of expertise.

“We’re enabling outcomes that have never been possible before,” says Opaque cofounder Rishabh Poddar. “Take the rapid spread of Covid, for instance. Effective contact tracing could have saved countless lives but it was difficult to share information between parties because of confidentiality concerns around the different patient silos. A problem like that could have been solved with a technology like Opaque.”

The Opaque platform enables data to be securely shared and analyzed by multiple parties while the confidentiality of each party is maintained and data is protected end to end. The company is now working with some of the largest financial institutions in North America on fighting financial crime.

There is a pressing need for banks to share data with each other because criminal gangs, such as human traffickers, hide their tracks across multiple banks. But it’s difficult for competing banks to share data with each other because their information is highly confidential. With Opaque, secure and confidential data sharing suddenly becomes possible. Opaque enables secure collaboration by keeping each bank’s data confidential while supporting analytical queries that track transactions and identify patterns across multiple institutions.

“The fact that companies are now able to share their confidential data for scenarios like detecting human trafficking and offering better medical care is rewarding,” says Popa. “I really believe our technology is helping to change the world for the better.”

A company where every voice is valued

Besides building great technology, the Opaque founders are focused on creating a company with a great culture where employees can do their very best work. “We’re building a team that’s driven and ambitious yet supportive and inclusive,” says Poddar. “We want to foster a culture where everyone acts like a founder, thinks proactively and feels a sense of ownership. We accomplish that by encouraging open dialogue and honest discussion, and by valuing every voice.”

Diversity is also a core value. The founders believe that diversity of backgrounds and opinions powers growth, creativity and new ideas. Respect for each other’s time and minimization of meetings is also a key tenet of the company, which is why Opaque has implemented a “no-meeting Wednesdays” policy for its engineering team.

Synergy with Walden Catalyst

After raising a $9.5 million seed round in 2021 led by Intel Capital, Opaque secured $22 million in Series A funding from new investors Walden Catalyst, Storm Ventures and Thomvest Ventures. Much of that financing will go toward further developing the business, closing new customers, accelerating growth and hiring key executives and technical experts.

Working with Walden is paying dividends for Opaque. “Young and his teammates have already created value for our company, by introducing us to relevant customers and helped us strategize our next steps,” says Popa. “We also love the fact that our business has many synergies with the Walden Catalyst portfolio. Young has real insight into our business and deeply believes in our mission and what we’re trying to accomplish. We’re so excited for the future.”

Walden, for its part, is thrilled to work with a portfolio company like Opaque, which is having a profound impact on the world.

“The opportunity to work with such a promising company like Opaque is truly an honor,” says Sohn, the managing partner at Walden Catalyst who led the deal. “It’s an understatement to say that we don’t come across teams that are this strong and this accomplished every day. This is truly the right team at the right time in a market that is poised for explosive growth.”