Earendil, LLC is a California-based hardware security startup founded in July 2024 by Mehmet Sencan. The company develops SquibSink, a hardware tamper response system that provides instant, irreversible physical destruction of computing hardware upon tampering attempts, denying reverse engineering and secret extraction from high-value GPU clusters. Earendil also works on standards infrastructure for Flexible Hardware-Enabled Guarantees (flexHEGs), which enable on-chip, privacy-preserving verification of compliance with AI development agreements. The company received $1.34 million from the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2024 flexHEG grant round across two projects.
Funding Details
- Annual Budget
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- Monthly Burn Rate
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- Current Runway
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- Funding Goal
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- Funding Raised to Date
- $1,342,000
- Fiscal Sponsor
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Theory of Change
Earendil's theory of change is that effective governance of advanced AI development requires hardware-level enforcement mechanisms that cannot be bypassed through software alone. By building tamper-response technology that physically destroys computing hardware upon unauthorized access attempts, Earendil creates a foundational security layer for Flexible Hardware-Enabled Guarantees (flexHEGs). These mechanisms enable on-chip, privacy-preserving verification of compliance with AI development agreements, allowing international coordination on AI safety without requiring parties to expose proprietary information. The physical security layer ensures that software-based governance mechanisms embedded in AI accelerators remain trustworthy and cannot be circumvented, thereby enabling credible commitments between AI developers, regulators, and nations about the safe development and use of advanced AI technology. Earendil also works on the standards infrastructure needed to make these hardware guarantees interoperable and widely adoptable across different types of AI accelerators.
Grants Received
No grants recorded.
Projects
Earendil develops hardware tamper response systems for AI compute infrastructure, enabling physical security layers that support governance and compliance verification of GPU clusters used in AI development.
Earendil develops standards and infrastructure for hardware-enabled AI compute governance, building the protocols and specifications that enable privacy-preserving verification of compliance with AI development agreements.
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Details
- Last Updated
- Mar 19, 2026, 6:48 PM UTC
- Created
- Mar 19, 2026, 6:22 PM UTC