Eternal announced plans to release Dark.ai, a general-purpose AI assistant that uses encrypted communication and proprietary models to ensure user conversations remain completely private, marking a bold move in India’s AI landscape.
- Dark.ai uses fine-tuned open-weight AI models running on Eternal’s infrastructure
- Offers end-to-end encryption and encrypted memory management controlled by users
- Aims for global launch in 2026, positioning a high-margin AI product
What happened
Eternal, the parent company of Indian food delivery giant Zomato, revealed plans to launch Dark.ai, an AI assistant designed to keep user data private by leveraging end-to-end encryption and proprietary open-weight AI models. According to its founder Deepinder Goyal, the company guarantees it cannot read user conversations, even if legally compelled to do so. This new AI assistant is positioned to launch globally by the end of 2026.
Unlike other Indian AI systems, such as those used by Zomato or competitors Swiggy and Zepto which focus on commerce-related AI functionalities, Dark.ai aims to be a general-purpose assistant. Eternal’s letter and earnings call showcased how Dark’s encrypted memory management preserves user privacy while allowing context to carry across sessions.
Why it matters
Dark.ai’s approach challenges prevailing norms of AI privacy, which often rely on company promises about data handling without providing verifiable guarantees. Eternal critiques mainstream AI platforms for insufficient protections against third-party access, human auditing, and data retention policies, emphasizing that existing AI privacy controls only cover training data and not other exposure risks.
This initiative taps into broader concerns among AI developers, journalists, and users about confidentiality and intellectual property safety when using public or commercial AI models. By offering an encrypted and company-inaccessible assistant, Eternal hopes to attract users wary of surveillance or data misuse, potentially setting a new privacy standard in India’s burgeoning AI market.
What to watch next
Eternal plans to publish performance benchmarks for Dark.ai soon, offering insight into the AI’s accuracy and trustworthiness since its models are trained to prioritize truthful answers rather than pleasing users. Investors and analysts will be keen to see if this privacy-first AI can succeed commercially and scale as a high-margin global business.
The company currently assigns Dark’s development costs to a broader category including other projects like the Bistro delivery app and Nugget enterprise AI. Future updates will likely clarify how Eternal will monetize Dark.ai and provide transparency on verifying its privacy claims, critical factors for user adoption and regulatory scrutiny in India and beyond.