Cohere opens confidential computing beta for Model Vault

Cohere announced the public beta of Confidential Computing on Model Vault on October 22, 2026.[1] Model Vault is a dedicated, fully managed model-inference service for enterprises, according to Cohere.[2] The new capability is designed to protect data while a model is processing it, which Cohere describes as “data in use.”[2] Inference runs in a hardware-backed confidential environment spanning the CPU and GPU.[2] For teams assessing hosted inference, the focus is on protecting information during processing, not just while it is being transmitted or stored.

Cohere says hardware-enforced isolation shields workload memory from infrastructure software and operators outside the confidential boundary.[2] The beta runs on NVIDIA H100 GPUs on Microsoft Azure, with Azure providing the underlying confidential-computing infrastructure.[2] NVIDIA Confidential Computing protects GPU memory and encrypts traffic between the CPU and GPU during inference.[2] Model Vault also encrypts application payloads end-to-end to the attested confidential environment; encrypted requests can pass through intermediary infrastructure without exposing their contents, and only that environment can decrypt them.[2] Cohere says responses are protected on the return path as well.[2]

Customers continue to use the Model Vault API and familiar request formats, Cohere says.[2] Before sensitive data is sent, customer-side software cryptographically verifies the processing environment.[2] The checks include the environment’s hardware, firmware and software configuration, and the client refuses to send a request if the environment fails the approved security policy.[2] This puts a verification step on the customer side of the workflow. Teams evaluating the beta should account for that check when planning how requests are prepared and sent, rather than treating encryption alone as the complete control.

Cohere says customers can start deploying encrypted Model Vault workloads today, while its documentation directs customers seeking beta access to contact Cohere.[2][3] Model Vault Encrypted is priced separately from a Standard Vault.[3] It uses a confidential virtual machine and an NVIDIA GPU in confidential-computing mode.[4] Cohere says the encrypted-vault model lineup is still expanding and may differ from Standard Vault availability.[4] Its documentation also notes that confidential computing does not eliminate risks such as hardware side-channel attacks and physical attacks.[3] Those qualifications matter when comparing deployment options and setting security expectations.