Eternal, the parent company of Zomato and Blinkit, plans to launch a privacy-focused artificial intelligence assistant called Dark by the end of 2026, founder Deepinder Goyal said in the company's Q2 shareholder letter on Wednesday, according to The Hindu BusinessLine and Inc42.

"Dark is built for power users — founders, researchers, scientists, enterprises and governments — who want to keep their thoughts private, because privacy is essential for competitiveness," Goyal said in the letter, as reported by The Hindu BusinessLine. He said the models are fine-tuned to give direct answers and are trained not simply to please the user.

Inc42 reported that Dark has been in internal use for a few months, runs fine-tuned open-weight models on Eternal's own infrastructure, and promises end-to-end encrypted conversations alongside an encrypted memory layer controlled by users. "We cannot read your conversations, even if we are forced to," Goyal said, according to Inc42.

Goyal argued, as reported by both outlets, that concerns about data retention, legal holds, human review or third-party logging can stop people from sharing sensitive work with mainstream AI assistants. Dark is positioned as Eternal's answer to that concern, though the company has not yet announced pricing or a confirmed launch date beyond Goyal's hope of a global launch within 2026.

The announcement came alongside Eternal's Q2 results. The board also approved consolidating the group's Going-out India business into its wholly-owned subsidiary Zomato Entertainment Private Limited as part of an internal restructuring, The Hindu BusinessLine reported. Sources: The Hindu BusinessLine, Inc42 and Digit.