Confidential Computing Summit 2026 Schedule Showcases Next Era of AI Sovereignty

Confidential Computing Summit 2026 Schedule Showcases Next Era of AI Sovereignty

The Linux Foundation | 07 May 2026

‍Summary

• The Linux Foundation and OPAQUE announced the schedule for Confidential Computing Summit 2026, which will be held in San Francisco, California, on June 23-24, 2026.
• The event serves as the premier gathering for confidential computing, providing practical insight into how Confidential AI is enabling secure, governed, and transparent workloads across cloud and distributed environments.
• Attendees will gain insights from experts at industry-leading organizations like Amazon, AMD, DigiCert, Google, LY Corporation, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OPAQUE, Samsung Electronics, TII, UC Berkeley and more.

SAN FRANCISCO, May 7, 2026 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the schedule for Confidential Computing Summit 2026, taking place in San Francisco, CA, from June 23-24, 2026. Co-hosted with OPAQUE, the Confidential AI company defining the trust layer for enterprise AI, this premier gathering unites enterprise leaders, technologists, and policymakers to advance confidential computing and the secure deployment of AI workloads.

"As organizations move into full-scale AI deployment, there is a critical need to prioritize data sovereignty and risk mitigation," said Jim Zemlin, CEO of the Linux Foundation. "Confidential Computing Summit brings together the community focused on building the open tools and standards necessary to ensure that privacy and security are not sacrificed for performance."

The summit was created to address a critical bottleneck in the market: enterprise AI adoption is often constrained by the inability to securely process sensitive data into models, regulators are tightening rules, and security risks remain high. A recent study conducted by IDC found that 75% of organizations are now adopting Confidential Computing. This rapid adoption is fueled primarily by a critical need for technical assurance, as 88% of respondents cited improved data integrity as their leading implementation driver. Across the summit, keynotes and workshops will highlight agent security, intellectual property protection, verifiable environments, securing the next generation of AI workloads, cloud-to-edge infrastructure, and sensitive data collaborations.

“AI adoption is no longer limited by model capability. It’s limited by trust. As AI agents begin operating autonomously across sensitive systems and data, organizations need verifiable guarantees that their data, models, and workflows remain protected during execution, not just policies that assume compliance,” said Aaron Fulkerson, CEO of OPAQUE. “Confidential computing and Confidential AI are becoming foundational infrastructure for secure, sovereign AI at scale, and the Confidential Computing Summit brings together the leaders building that trust layer for the next generation of AI.”

Keynotes include:

• Hugo Romero, Corporate Vice President, Product Security, AMD
• Ion Stoica, Professor, UC Berkeley, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Databricks and Anyscale, Co-Founder and Board Member, OPAQUE
• Nelly Porter, Director of Product Management, GCP Confidential Computing and Encryption, Google
• Mark Russinovich, CTO, Deputy CISO and Technical Fellow, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft
• Dr. Najwa Aaraj, CEO, Technology Innovation Institute (TII)
• Aaron Fulkerson, CEO, OPAQUE

Additional keynote speakers will be announced shortly.

Highlights at Confidential Computing Summit include:

The "Trust Layer" for the Agentic Economy and AI Models

Explore the necessity of building a verifiable trust infrastructure to support the next generation of AI agents and sensitive model data.

• Trust Is the Next Bottleneck: Why the Agentic Economy Needs Confidential Computing - Pawan Khandavilli, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft
• From Pixels to Agents: Optimizing On-Device Performance of Confidential Computing in AI Evolution - Savas Ozkan, Engineering Manager, Samsung Research UK & Bokdeuk Jeong, Principal Engineer, Samsung Electronics
• Realizing Confidential VMs ensuring privacy of AI features at LY Corporation in a Real-World Cloud - Hiroki Narukawa, Software Engineer; Masataka Minoji, Software Engineer; and Akihiro Misawa, Infrastructure Engineer, LY Corporation

Scaling Confidential Infrastructure (Kubernetes & Hyperclusters)

Dive into the technical challenge of operationalizing confidential computing at an enterprise scale, particularly within containerized environments.

• WhatsApp Private Processing - Kevin Hui, Software Engineer; Yunqi Li, Research Scientist; Sidharth Verma, Software Engineer; Varun Patil, Research Scientist; and Henry Wang, SWE, Meta
• GKE Hypercluster: Kubernetes TEEs for AI at Scale - Komei Nakamoto, GKE AI Security Tech Lead, Google
• "If It's Shared, It's Vulnerable": Is Kubernetes the Right Platform for Confidential Compute? - Zvonko Kaiser, Principal Systems Engineer, NVIDIA

Attestation and Hardware-Rooted Trust Foundations

Understand the shift in how trust is established, moving away from traditional identity-based models toward hardware-verified attestation.

• NVIDIA Confidential Computing Attestation for Next-Generation AI Hardware - Rob Nertney, Principal Software Architect and Spencer Gilson, Senior Systems Software Engineer, NVIDIA
• From Trust Assumptions to Trust Evidence: Why PKI and Confidential Computing Are Converging - Brian Trzupek, Sr. Vice President Product, DigiCert
• Overview of the AWS Nitro System: Building Trust Through Secure Cloud Infrastructure - Matthew Wilson, Vice President/Distinguished Engineer, Amazon

Registration

Registration is now open. Early bird pricing is available through May 12, 2026. To request a press pass, contact pr@linuxfoundation.org.

Event Sponsors
Confidential Computing Summit NA 2026 is made possible thanks to our sponsors, including:

• Diamond Sponsors: AMD, Confidential Computing Consortium, Google, Microsoft, and Technology Innovation Institute
• Gold: Tinfoil

To learn more about becoming an event sponsor, click here.

About OPAQUE
OPAQUE is the Confidential AI company. Born from UC Berkeley’s RISELab, OPAQUE solves the core challenge blocking AI adoption at scale: security concerns about data leaks or compliance violations. OPAQUE provides verifiable privacy and governance for AI so organizations can safely run models, agents, and workflows on their most sensitive data. Its Confidential AI platform delivers verifiable runtime governance backed by cryptographic proof that data, models, and agent actions remain private, governed, and compliant with approved policies throughout every AI workflow. This extends traditional data governance tools with real runtime verification, enabling teams to responsibly deploy AI using their most valuable proprietary data, and move from pilot to production 4-5X faster. Customers and partners include ServiceNow, Anthropic, Encore Capital, Accenture, and leaders across high tech, financial services, insurance, and healthcare. Learn more at opaque.co.

About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the world's leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects are critical to the world's infrastructure, including Linux, Kubernetes, LF Decentralized Trust, Node.js, ONAP, OpenChain, OpenSSF, PyTorch, RISC-V, SPDX, Zephyr, Confidential Computing Consortium (CCC) and more. The Linux Foundation focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact
The Linux Foundation
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