Vast Data and CoreWeave roll out confidential computing and remote key encryption for AI workloads

Vast Data launched DataEnclave, a confidential computing environment within its DataEngine and Vast AI Operating System. The company said the service uses Nvidia Corp.'s confidential computing technology to create hardware-isolated environments where proprietary models and enterprise data can be decrypted and processed securely. It targets financial institutions, healthcare providers, government agencies and other organizations that cannot move regulated data to externally hosted AI services, as well as model developers that do not want to distribute model weights into infrastructure they do not control.

DataEnclave uses trusted execution environments spanning central processing units and graphics processing units. It encrypts guest memory, GPU memory and NVLink traffic while isolating active models and data from administrators, infrastructure operators and other tenants. A cryptographic attestation process verifies hardware, software and governing policies before models or data are decrypted. Enterprises and model developers retain control of their encryption keys through integrations with their own key management systems.

'Model weights are fast becoming the most valuable intellectual property in the world,' Jeff Denworth, Vast Data's co-founder, said. 'Base weights define the value of frontier models, while fine-tuned weights will increasingly represent the proprietary intelligence of AI-driven enterprises.'

Denworth said the industry had lacked a strong way to ensure the memory space used for such computation was equally protected. 'Once you get to the final computing destination, is that environment safe enough to actually decrypt the world's most sensitive data?' he said.

DataEnclave can be deployed in customer data centers, AI clouds and fully air-gapped environments. Its attestation services are based on the open-source Cloud Native Computing Foundation Trustee project or can be provided through Fortanix Inc.'s Confidential AI offering. The system logs attestation events, key releases and enclave lifecycle activity in the Vast DataBase data warehouse, providing an audit trail without revealing protected data or model weights.

Initial model and software partners include Cohere Inc., CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., Deepgram Inc., The San Francisco AI Factory Inc., Fundamental Research Labs Inc. and TwelveLabs Inc. Cisco Systems Inc. and Super Micro Computer Inc. are among hardware partners that will offer integrated systems. Vast said the model lets a developer's base weights and a customer's fine-tuned weights operate together while remaining under separate ownership and key control. Vast is initially focusing on large banks, intelligence and defense agencies and pharmaceutical companies. DataEnclave is included in the existing AI Operating System at no extra charge, according to Denworth, and is available in preview, with shipment scheduled for the first quarter of 2027 through Vast and participating hardware partners.

CoreWeave Inc. unveiled Remote Key Encryption, a service that encrypts customer data on its infrastructure with keys the company itself never holds. SiliconANGLE reported that the offering is designed to address the key-custody problem that keeps enterprise AI projects in security review. Encryption runs client-side, inside a customer's own compute boundary, using keys generated and stored in whatever secrets manager, key management system or hardware security module the customer already operates. No key is imported into a CoreWeave-side key store, so the company holds only ciphertext.

Access to nodes remains gated behind CoreWeave's Support Access Management controls. Support engineers cannot reach those nodes without a customer's express permission, according to the announcement. Rotation, expiration and revocation run on the customer's existing schedule and tooling. CoreWeave said the service drives rotation and deletion through that infrastructure rather than creating a parallel set of controls, and that its approach to key lifecycle management is patent pending. The underlying encryption algorithms are standard ones.

'The fastest path through the loop to production isn't a new security model,' Andy Manoske, product lead for enterprise and security at CoreWeave, and Paul Friedman, head of security foundations, wrote in a blog post. 'It's making sure our security layer speaks fluently to the one you have already built.'

CoreWeave's identity work includes CoreWeave IAM, which handles authentication and authorization across its cloud and federates with enterprise identity providers including Microsoft Corp.'s Entra and Okta Inc., leaving the customer's provider as the source of truth. Automated User Provisioning, introduced last November, syncs users and groups continuously across CoreWeave Kubernetes Service, AI Object Storage and the console. For training clusters, CoreWeave offers SUNK, which packages the open-source job scheduler Slurm for Kubernetes. SUNK User Provisioning creates POSIX users and groups, syncs SSH keys and sets up the Slurm account when a federated user appears in CoreWeave IAM.

Remote Key Encryption enters limited availability later this year, with IBM Corp. as a launch partner. The first release protects data on CoreWeave AI Object Storage using keys held in HashiCorp Vault, HashiCorp Vault Enterprise or any key management or hardware security product supporting the Key Management Interoperability Protocol. IBM acquired HashiCorp Inc. in February 2025. CoreWeave's Fully Connected conference is scheduled for Sept. 30 to Oct. 1 in San Francisco.