# Ockam

> Ockam was a San Francisco developer-tools company that built open-source infrastructure for cryptographic identity, mutual authentication, authorization, and end-to-end encrypted communication between distributed applications. Its defining bet was that developers should be able to connect workloads across clouds, companies, and private networks at the application layer, without rebuilding the network underneath. The company later extended that foundation toward autonomous AI-agent infrastructure before dissolving in July 2026; its Apache-licensed project and documentation remain public.

- **Founded:** 2017
- **Headquarters:** San Francisco, United States
- **Founders:** Matthew Gregory (Founder and CEO)
- **Team size:** More than 20 people at its peak, according to the company's LinkedIn history; the same page listed three associated employees in August 2026 after dissolution.
- **Products:** Ockam Open Source, Ockam Command, Ockam Orchestrator, Ockam Portals, Autonomy
- **Notable:** Built an Apache-licensed Rust repository that had about 4,600 GitHub stars and more than 550 forks by August 2026., Reduced a multi-step cryptographic secure-channel protocol to a small developer-facing API and command-line workflow., Completed an independent protocol design review and formal modeling engagement with Trail of Bits.

## Products & services

- **Ockam Open Source** — Apache-licensed Rust tools and protocols for cryptographic identities, mutual authentication, authorization policies, routing, and end-to-end encrypted secure channels.
- **Ockam Command** — A command-line interface for creating identities, nodes, secure channels, relays, portals, projects, enrollment tickets, and policies.
- **Ockam Orchestrator** — A hosted service that managed cloud projects, elastic relays, enrollment, credentials, and the operational layer around secure application connectivity.
- **Ockam Portals** — Application-layer inlets and outlets that presented a remote TCP service locally while carrying traffic over mutually authenticated, end-to-end encrypted channels.
- **Autonomy** — A later platform-as-a-service direction for operating long-running swarms of autonomous AI agents, extending Ockam's identity, actor, and secure-communication foundations.

## Achievements

- Built an Apache-licensed Rust repository that had about 4,600 GitHub stars and more than 550 forks by August 2026.
- Reduced a multi-step cryptographic secure-channel protocol to a small developer-facing API and command-line workflow.
- Completed an independent protocol design review and formal modeling engagement with Trail of Bits.
- Launched a joint zero-trust streaming product with Redpanda in 2024.
- Shipped integrations and quickstarts spanning Kafka-compatible systems, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, InfluxDB, SFTP, WebDAV, and private APIs.
- Openly documented the decision to discard tens of thousands of lines of C and rebuild the protocol runtime in Rust.

## Latest updates

- **2023-11** — Trail of Bits published its design review of Ockam's cryptographic protocols.
- **2024-05** — Ockam and Redpanda launched Redpanda Connect with Ockam for secured streaming data pipelines.
- **2025-03** — Ockam's updated terms described software, a web-based platform, SaaS services, subscriptions, usage charges, and separate Apache-licensed open-source tools.
- **2025** — The company extended its identity and actor-system work into Autonomy, a platform for long-running autonomous AI-agent swarms.
- **2026-07** — Ockam dissolved, according to its current LinkedIn company description; the open-source project and documentation remained online.

## Links

- Website: https://docs.ockam.io
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ockam.io
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/ockam
- GitHub: https://github.com/build-trust/ockam
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Ockam

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/ockam
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-18