Sharon AI and VAST Data Partner to Bring Secure AI Enclaves to Australia

The partnership addresses a critical impasse for organizations handling highly sensitive information. Previously, strict data residency requirements and security concerns often prevented firms from utilizing advanced, cloud-hosted AI models. By leveraging VAST’s confidential AI capability, Sharon AI creates a runtime environment where sensitive assets are only decrypted after the system verifies security policies through cryptographic attestation.

This architecture relies on CPU-level trusted execution environments and NVIDIA GPUs operating in confidential mode, ensuring that memory and interconnect traffic remain encrypted throughout processing. Customers and model owners maintain independent control over their encryption keys, effectively decoupling security management from the underlying infrastructure. James Manning, CEO of Sharon AI, noted that the move enables clients to run frontier models while maintaining verifiable sovereignty. The system supports both connected and fully air-gapped deployments, providing an audit trail for every enclave lifecycle action to ensure compliance for mission-critical work.