San Francisco-based startup Confident Security has officially launched from stealth mode with $4.2 million in seed funding, aiming to establish itself as the “Signal for AI.”
The company, founded by Jonathan Mortensen, has developed CONFSEC, an encryption layer designed to wrap around AI models and shield user data from being stored, accessed, or used for training — even by the model providers themselves.
The funding round was led by Decibel, with participation from South Park Commons, Ex Ante, and Swyx. With this capital, Confident Security is positioning itself as a crucial intermediary between AI vendors and enterprise clients in highly regulated sectors such as healthcare, finance, and government, where data sensitivity is paramount.
Encryption Architecture Inspired by Apple
CONFSEC is modeled after Apple’s Private Cloud Compute architecture. It anonymizes data by encrypting and routing it through services like Cloudflare and Fastly, ensuring that even server infrastructure cannot view the original input. Data is then only decrypted under strict pre-defined conditions, such as non-logging and no AI training usage.
“The second that you give up your data to someone else, you’ve essentially reduced your privacy,” said Mortensen in an interview with TechCrunch. “And our product’s goal is to remove that trade-off.”
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Gaining Traction Among Enterprises
The company’s product is already being externally audited and is production-ready, according to Mortensen. CONFSEC is currently being evaluated by potential clients, including banks, search engines, and AI-powered browsers such as Perplexity’s Comet. The software also includes open-source logging for public review, reinforcing transparency and trust.
A Growing Need for Infrastructure-Embedded Privacy
As concerns around data misuse slow AI adoption, particularly in sensitive industries, Confident Security sees a large addressable market.
“Confident Security is ahead of the curve in recognizing that the future of AI depends on trust built into the infrastructure itself,” said Jess Leão, partner at Decibel.
With the motto “You bring the AI, we bring the privacy,” Confident Security aims to become an essential privacy layer for the next wave of AI deployment.
