Fortanix® Inc., a global leader in data and AI security and pioneer of Confidential Computing, today announced support for CNCF Confidential Containers (CoCo) in Fortanix Confidential AI, enabling organizations to run AI workloads on Kubernetes inside hardware-based Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), on confidential CPUs and GPUs. Enterprises keep the speed and agility of containers while protecting sensitive data, AI models, agents, and applications in use, so they can support their regulatory compliance efforts, scale AI across the business, and adopt frontier AI without compromising data privacy or intellectual property.

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Confidential AI is a critical need in the industry today, and a strong ecosystem of industry leaders is collaborating to advance open innovation and help enterprises securely adopt AI at scale.

Confidential AI is a critical need in the industry today, and a strong ecosystem of industry leaders is collaborating to advance open innovation and help enterprises securely adopt AI at scale.

Regulated industries, including financial services, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and government, need to run AI on sensitive and sovereign data without exposing that data or their models to the infrastructure operator. New research from Fortanix and Atomik Research underscores the challenge: while 93% of AI leaders understand that traditional encryption does not protect data while it is being processed by AI, only half can fully verify that protection is in place during inference. Fortanix Confidential AI isolates workloads inside hardware-based TEEs and uses attestation to verify each environment before any data or model is unlocked. That same trusted environment lets enterprises run proprietary models from frontier AI labs on-premises or in air-gapped environments, next to their most sensitive data, without putting the model owner’s intellectual property at risk.

“Containers are how the world ships applications, and in the AI era, they’re what makes AI scalable. But moving AI into containers doesn’t change the threat,” said Anand Kashyap, co-founder and CEO of Fortanix. “Models, agents and applications still touch an organization’s most sensitive data and intellectual property, and each one needs zero-trust security, including while it runs. That’s why we built Fortanix Confidential AI support for Confidential Containers: so teams can deploy containers into confidential computing environments with one click across supported hardware and Kubernetes platforms, with every workload verified before even a single key is released.”

From Open Foundation to Running Confidential AI at Enterprise Scale

CoCo has advanced Confidential AI by enabling AI workloads to run inside TEEs on Kubernetes. As these AI-powered applications move into production, organizations need security that holds up at scale and under audit. To help meet that need, Fortanix is developing open-source plugins to CoCo, connecting Fortanix Confidential Computing Manager for attestation and Fortanix Data Security Manager for secure key release. Working within CoCo’s standard workflows, the plugins verify that every container is genuine, runs inside a TEE, and meets security policy before any keys are released. Built for production at scale, the Fortanix AI security platform delivers:

  • High availability: Clustered deployment designed so key release never becomes a single point of failure.

  • Enterprise support: SLA-backed, 24×7 global support from the team that built the platform.

  • Certified security: FIPS 140-2 Level 3, SOC 2 Type 2, and ISO/IEC 27001.

  • Proven adoption: Trusted by governments, banks, healthcare providers, technology and retail leaders, and cybersecurity companies.

With this release, developers can deploy Confidential AI workloads on Kubernetes at the speed the business demands, while leaders gain assurance that security is built in from the start and can take AI to production with confidence.

“Attestation is a process. Trust is an operation,” said Anuj Jaiswal, Chief Product Officer at Fortanix. “CoCo has proven that confidential AI works in open source. Enterprises now need it to run reliably in production. Fortanix Confidential AI protects both the model owner’s intellectual property and the enterprise data, and neither is exposed to the other or to the infrastructure provider. With attestation and key management in one platform, teams can adopt standard CoCo without building the trust layer themselves.”

“Enterprises need data to stay protected while running models and agents, and labs need the same privacy to protect their models — NVIDIA Confidential Computing keeps both data and models private,” said John Fanelli, vice president, Enterprise Software, NVIDIA. “Through open source collaboration with the CNCF Confidential Containers community, Fortanix is building on open standards for attestation and secure key release at production scale.”

Closing the Core Security Gap in AI

Encryption protects data at rest and in transit. During AI inference without Confidential Computing, model weights and sensitive data must be decrypted in CPU and GPU memory, where they can be exposed to privileged administrators, cloud operators, and anyone with access to the infrastructure. Fortanix Confidential AI closes this gap. Before any sensitive workload runs, it verifies that both the underlying hardware and the AI workload are genuine and unaltered. Encryption keys are released only after verification succeeds, and only inside the protected environment.

Because the CPU and GPU are verified together through composite attestation, the full execution path is trusted, not just a part of it. Encryption keys stay within Fortanix Data Security Manager (DSM), a FIPS 140-2 Level 3 HSM and key management solution, which is widely adopted by global enterprises in regulated industries and the public sector. Fortanix Confidential Computing Manager (CCM) provides hardware-rooted attestation for the open-source CoCo runtime. The Confidential AI solution deploys as SaaS, on-premises, or fully air-gapped, so regulated, sovereign, and disconnected environments can adopt Confidential AI without depending on the cloud.

Confidential AI is a critical need in the industry today and a strong ecosystem of industry leaders including, NVIDIA, Alpha Compute, AMD, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Deepgram, Dell, Eleven Labs, Fujitsu, Gnani, H2O.ai, HPE, Intel, Klique, Personal AI, Rafay, Red Hat, Resemble AI, Spectro Cloud, Supermicro, Technology Innovation Institute (TII), TELUS and VAST Data are collaborating to advance open innovation and help enterprises securely adopt AI at scale.

“Alpha Compute is honored to join Fortanix and NVIDIA in a partnership that turns data ownership from a principle into something enterprises can implement. Our customers in regulated and sovereign environments need to run frontier models and AI agents on their most sensitive data with proof that the data never leaves their control, not even to the infrastructure operator. Confidential Containers, backed by Fortanix attestation and key management, give them that proof. We are proud to bring this to market with Fortanix and to make verifiable, sovereign intelligence the default.” – Brittany Kaiser, CEO of Alpha Compute

“As enterprises scale AI across increasingly sensitive workloads, trust must be built into the infrastructure from the start. AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct accelerators provide the Confidential Computing foundation needed to help protect data and AI models in use. Through our collaboration with Fortanix and the broader Confidential Containers ecosystem, we’re helping customers deploy AI workloads with stronger security, greater confidence, and the operational flexibility required for production environments.” – Raghu Nambiar, Corporate Vice President, Software and Solutions, AMD

“The challenge with enterprise AI isn’t just getting models running. It’s building an architecture that lets organizations use their most important data securely, wherever AI is running. Cisco believes security has to be designed into the AI infrastructure from the start, across compute, networking, data, applications and the workloads themselves. Confidential Computing adds an important layer by protecting data and models while they’re actively being used, helping enterprises move AI into production with greater confidence.” – Jeremy Foster, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Compute

“Securing AI at scale takes an ecosystem. No single company can solve every security challenge as enterprises move AI into production. CrowdStrike is driving the cybersecurity ecosystem forward, working with partners like Fortanix to help enterprises innovate with AI without compromising security.” – Daniel Bernard, chief business officer, CrowdStrike

“Voice AI gets more useful the more context it can carry through a conversation and beyond. For enterprises, that creates a hard engineering problem: the information that makes the experience work may be the very information you can’t risk exposing. Our work with Fortanix gives teams a way to run Deepgram’s real-time voice AI in their own environment while keeping audio and model weights protected during inference. Fortanix’s support for Confidential Containers brings greater protection into the Kubernetes systems enterprises already operate, making private voice AI easier to integrate safely and at scale.” – Kris Efland, VP of Engineering, Deepgram

“ElevenLabs is deploying our models on-premises for enterprise customers on NVIDIA infrastructure, so they can run voice AI inside their own environments with full control over their data. Confidential Containers from Fortanix help secure one layer of that stack, and we’re glad to see the ecosystem continue to strengthen on-prem AI.” – Ashish Uchil, BD & Partnerships, ElevenLabs

“Fujitsu is committed to advancing Confidential Computing through FUJITSU-MONAKA and Arm CCA. We welcome Fortanix’s approach to applying Confidential Computing technologies to enterprise AI and secure digital infrastructure, and look forward to enabling and accelerating this vision through the scalable, Arm CCA-based Confidential Computing capabilities of FUJITSU-MONAKA.” – Toshio Yoshida, SVP and Head of Advanced Computing Development Unit, Fujitsu Research at Fujitsu

“Enterprise AI transformation in the US, India, and globally is hitting a wall that isn’t about model quality – it’s about trust and control. That’s why we’ve built Gnani.ai around Resident AI: intelligence that operates inside an enterprise’s own environment, under its own controls, rather than asking enterprises to hand that control away. Partnering with Fortanix lets us back that promise with the Confidential Computing and data security enterprises actually require before they’ll put agentic AI into production.” – Ganesh Gopalan, Co-founder and CEO, Gnani AI

“In the age of AI agent swarms and a growing surface for cyberattacks, Confidential Computing becomes critical for AI safety and for preserving the sovereignty of organizations. At H2O.ai, we believe every organization is an AI organization, and owning your AI has to include protecting it while it runs. We look forward to partnering with Fortanix to bring that protection to regulated agencies that trust us with their most sensitive AI.” – Sri Ambati, CEO and Founder, H2O.ai.

“HPE and Fortanix are already working together as part of the HPE Unleash AI partner program to deliver Confidential Computing-based secure AI solutions. With Fortanix support for Confidential Containers, HPE Private Cloud AI customers in regulated industries can now scale models, applications and pipelines with even more speed and agility.” – Robin Braun, vice president, AI business development, Hybrid Cloud, HPE

“As enterprises scale AI across Kubernetes environments, trust and security must start at the hardware layer. Intel® TDX provides hardware-enforced isolation to help protect sensitive models and data while in use. Together with ecosystem partners such as Fortanix and open technologies like CNCF Confidential Containers, we are helping customers accelerate the adoption of Confidential AI with greater confidence, security, and operational flexibility.” – Anand Pashupathy, Vice President and General Manager, Intel Product Assurance & Security

“As enterprises and sovereign cloud providers scale proprietary models and agentic AI on sensitive data, security can’t end at the container. Fortanix provides hardware-rooted attestation and secure key release via CNCF Confidential Containers, while Klique delivers multi-tenant scheduling, budget governance, and model routing across heterogeneous GPU estates. Our joint architecture offers the cryptographic certainty organizations need to put mission-critical AI into production.” – Moses Guttmann, CEO and Co-Founder, Klique

“Personal intelligence only works if people trust where their memory lives. Carriers need to prove that each subscriber’s data stays protected even while the model is running. Confidential Computing on standard Kubernetes, through open projects like CoCo, makes that possible at scale, and Fortanix is helping bring it to production.” – Jon Bikoff, Chief Business Officer, Personal AI

“Sovereign AI clouds, neoclouds, and regulated enterprises want to put their most sensitive data and proprietary models to work, and more of that AI now runs on Kubernetes. Fortanix and Rafay have already integrated to deliver Confidential AI as a self-service offering. Fortanix verifies the environment and releases keys, and Rafay handles provisioning, multi-tenancy, and governance across GPU infrastructure. Fortanix support for CoCo extends that same model to containerized workloads, so operators can offer Confidential AI to their own customers without building the trust layer or the orchestration layer themselves. Rafay will support CoCo-based deployments alongside our existing Confidential VM integration.” – Mohan Atreya, Chief Product Officer, Rafay

“Red Hat is committed to providing an open, security-focused foundation for modern AI workloads across the hybrid cloud, both through our work in open source communities like the CNCF and our own flagship application platform in Red Hat OpenShift. The work Fortanix is doing within the CNCF Confidential Containers project highlights the power of open collaboration in solving critical security challenges like protecting data in use.” – Mike Barrett, Vice President, Hybrid Cloud Platforms, Red Hat

“Bringing our AI detection models into customer environments requires us to think about both our growth and protecting our IP. Fortanix Confidential AI, with support for Confidential Containers, removes any concern around IP theft or misuse. We can deploy our models into third-party environments without changing how we work. Now we can meet our customers wherever they need us and bring our technology to new markets, helping more organizations fight AI fraud and deepfakes.” – Zohaib Ahmed, CEO and Co-founder, Resemble AI

“Our customers run AI close to where the data lives: on-premises, at the edge, in sovereign and air-gapped environments where there’s no cloud to fall back on. Fortanix brings Confidential Computing with hardware-rooted attestation and key management into those environments. Spectro Cloud brings an AI infrastructure platform, powered by Kubernetes, that can be deployed and operated consistently across all of them. For enterprises and neo-cloud providers, that’s what makes Confidential AI practical outside the hyperscalers.” – Saad Malik, CTO and Co-founder, Spectro Cloud

“Confidential Containers will bring native support for hardware-backed isolation and remote attestation to Kubernetes, addressing a missing capability in current cloud and on-premises deployments. It also lays the groundwork for combining TEEs with Confidential Computing cryptographic techniques such as zero-knowledge proofs and secure multi-party computation. Together, these technologies can keep data private during AI inference and training. Workloads will no longer need to be assumed trustworthy because they can cryptographically prove they are not mishandling data.” – Victor Mateu, Chief Researcher, Technology Innovation Institute (TII)

“TELUS built Canada’s sovereign AI infrastructure so that researchers, enterprises and public institutions no longer have to send their data outside the country to access world-class AI. We’re partnering with Fortanix on AI security and data protection, starting with encryption key management in our Sovereign AI Factory. Confidential AI is the next step, and we’re working with Fortanix and our customers to bring it to organizations that need to run frontier models on their most sensitive data.” – Chris Madan, VP, Customer Digital Solutions and Product, TELUS

“VAST DataEnclave brings leading models to enterprise data inside hardware-isolated, attested environments, with a tamper-proof record of every interaction. Fortanix is a core part of that trust layer, and with its support for CoCo, enterprises can now extend DataEnclave to container native architectures. Enterprise data and model IP stay protected on both sides, and regulated organizations can finally run leading AI where their data lives.” – Jeff Denworth, Co-Founder, VAST Data

Fortanix Confidential AI for CoCo is available now. More information is available at https://www.fortanix.com/platform/confidential-ai and our blog post.

Attending NVIDIA GTC Berlin? Visit Fortanix at Booth 7017, October 20-22, for a live demo of Confidential AI running on supported NVIDIA GPUs with Confidential Computing enabled and see how you can protect sensitive data and model IP while AI is running. Stop by the booth to discuss your architecture with our team or book a personalized demo in advance.

About Fortanix

Fortanix is the global leader in data and AI security and a pioneer of Confidential Computing, delivering a unified platform to protect sensitive data, AI models, and applications across on-premises and multi-cloud environments—at rest, in transit, and in use. Built on hardware-enforced security, Fortanix enables workloads to run in tamper-proof, isolated enclaves, protecting against data leakage, model extraction, and unauthorized access, even from privileged insiders.

As enterprises scale modern AI factories, Fortanix provides a Confidential AI foundation built on attestation-based trust, secure key release, and zero-trust enforcement. This ensures AI systems remain verifiable, auditable, and trustworthy—while enabling crypto agility and long-term resilience through post-quantum cryptography (PQC).

Trusted by leading enterprises and sovereign entities in highly regulated industries and powered by an industry-standard approach to Confidential Computing supported by leading technology providers, including Intel, Microsoft, and NVIDIA, Fortanix enables organizations to safely use sensitive data and drive AI adoption with confidence.

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