A trusted execution environment (TEE) keeps data encrypted even while a program works on it, and proves with a report signed by the chip which code it runs. It now covers the GPUs that run AI models too.
About half of US adults now use AI chatbots, and 71% of all US adults expect AI to make their personal information less secure. AI users rank trust and privacy above ease of use, and companies are expanding their privacy programs because of AI.
Between 14 September and 19 October 2026, Apple, NVIDIA, Google, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft each made a move in confidential computing, in which AI runs inside trusted execution environments.
The best open-weight models now outscore the closed flagships of February 2026 on an independent index, and on a tuned serving stack, trusted execution environments run them at close to full speed.
