Security Layers Project

Earendil, LLC is a California-based hardware security startup founded in July 2024 by Mehmet Sencan, a Caltech-trained applied physicist with over a decade of experience in chip and manufacturing technology. The company develops hardware tamper response systems designed to provide physical security for AI compute infrastructure, particularly high-value GPU clusters. Earendil's primary product is SquibSink, a hardware tamper response system that provides instant, irreversible hardware destruction upon tampering attempts. The system uses military-grade components to deny reverse engineering and secret extraction before adversaries can access critical components. It keeps unique device identifiers confidential and non-clonable, supporting export control compliance, gray-market prevention, and counterfeit protection. SquibSink is designed for large-scale implementation across GPU arrays and custom hardware configurations, with applications spanning defense, aerospace, and proprietary technology sectors. The Security Layers Project, funded through the SFF 2024 FlexHEGs (Flexible Hardware-Enabled Guarantees) grant round, focuses on the physical tamper-response layer of the flexHEG ecosystem. FlexHEGs are mechanisms designed to enable verification and automated compliance guarantees that are multilateral, privacy-preserving, and trustworthy, for agreements regarding the development and use of advanced AI technology. Earendil's tamper-response hardware forms a foundational security layer in this architecture, ensuring that on-chip governance mechanisms cannot be physically bypassed. Sencan's approach leverages existing industrial components with proven reliability, including positioning detonators within modified GPU heatsinks to provide effective physical destruction of computing hardware. This reduces complexity and cost compared to custom-engineered destructive solutions. Prior to founding Earendil, Sencan worked on hardware-enabled governor (HEG) components with Atlas Computing, an AI safety nonprofit, with support from the AI Safety Tactical Opportunities Fund (AISTOF). Earendil also maintains a technical blog at earendil.ai covering topics including extending hardware security standards for AI development, privacy-preserving compute auditing for cloud providers, evolving hardware security from standards to implementation, and technical implementation paths for safe AI hardware. The company is developed and manufactured in Southern California, ensuring quality control and compliance with U.S. standards.

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