Theses›Defence & security›Hardware attestation

Hardware attestation

A neutral cross-vendor verifier for what ran on shared AI hardware could be the Okta of compute, but nobody yet pays for what NVIDIA, Intel and AWS give away.

  • Bear
  • Early
  • $20B by 2035

The callThe bear case is more likely for now: vendor attestation is free because it sells silicon, so an independent layer can't price at the rate the function grows, and no enterprise has yet paid one. If this is right the market goes from $8.5B to about $19.7B by 2035 with the value inside the vendors.

D1D2D3R1R2R3C1foragainst D1D2D3R1R2R3C1foragainst
Fig. 1The balance. Drivers and catalysts against restraints, each block sized by its weight; catalysts hang dashed because they have not happened yet, sized by their odds. It tips toward the restraints.
  1. D1AI moves onto shared GPUs in clouds and countries the customer doesn't control, so what actually ran becomes a contract and compliance question.
  2. D2Each vendor attests only its own stack, and no vendor can be the auditor of itself across a fleet mixing all three.
  3. D3Agent workloads need per-agent records of what code touched which data, which no forecast prices yet.
  4. R1Vendor attestation is free because it sells silicon; the independent layer can't price at the rate the function grows.
  5. R2Security IP ends up inside someone else's chip, so exits clear small: Verimatrix silicon IP to Rambus for $65M, and another hardware security company to Arteris after 11 years.
  6. R3The AI Act texts so far ask for provenance and logging, not hardware attestation.
  7. C1Cyber Resilience Act harmonised standards cited in the Official Journal with a testable hardware root-of-trust clause, turning attestation into mandatory spend.Dec 2027
Rests onthe beliefs underneath
Supported by · confidence
Threatened by · confidence
What would prove itdated tests, open and resolved
202720282029today12watch 202720282029today12watch
Fig. 2Each ring is a dated test: dashed while open, struck through when overdue, ticked or crossed once resolved.
  1. 1Any AI Act, DORA or NIS2 implementing standard naming attestation as a required control; an independent secure element shipping in volume.Dec 2027 · open
  2. 2A firmware security independent disclosing ARR above about $75M; an enterprise paying an independent verifier over free vendor attestation.Dec 2028 · open
Expressionslisted, private, technologies

24 more private companies tracked, not shown

Technologies
What changedthe record, newest first
  • 23 Oct 2026I score hardware attestation at 20. Europe's rules are being written around outcomes, not chips, and Intel has made itself the neutral referee the startups were hoping to be.
  • 23 Oct 2026Three poisoned updates in a week, all of which signed build provenance would have flagged. That fix is software and free, which is why the hardware end stays with the chip vendors.
  • 9 Aug 2026A market I had sized as too small to matter may be getting a demand driver I did not price: if agent sandbox failures make attestation a precondition for deploying autonomous systems rather than a compliance checkbox, the buyer changes and so does the size.
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