Why we built ORCA Opti on Microsoft 365. And why that's not where the story ends.

When we started ORCA Opti, choosing Microsoft 365 as our foundation was a deliberate security decision, not a default.

I want to write about why we made that choice in the first place, what we've learned since, and what we're shipping today that builds on it without walking away from it.

The Microsoft case, in a sentence

Nothing else gave us the security and sovereignty floor we needed to build a governed AI platform we could actually defend.

When you sign in with your work account, the same security your IT team has already set up for the rest of your business protects you here too. The same login. The same multi-factor checks. The same rules about who can access what. We plug straight into all of it. Your data stays in your own private space inside your business, hosted in your country, and never leaves to train someone else's AI.

For a governed AI platform, that foundation does an enormous amount of heavy lifting before we write a single line of our own code. We didn't want to spend our first three years reinventing the locks, the keys, and the rules about where your information is allowed to live. We wanted to spend them on what no other vendor was doing: turning operational compliance into something your business can actually run on autopilot.

That's the choice that got us here. The result is a platform that is genuinely safer, by architecture, than any of the alternatives.

The part of the story I didn't expect

Over the last six months, we've heard from a growing number of businesses that wanted exactly what we'd built but didn't run on Microsoft 365. They run on Google Workspace. Their identity, their files, their email, all of it. Every time they came to us, we had to tell them the same thing: we love that you found us. We can't help you yet.

A few of them stayed in touch.

One of them, who I won't name yet because the story is still hers to tell, went and posted on LinkedIn about us anyway. She couldn't use the product. She still wanted to tell her network we were doing something worth paying attention to.

When you get a signal like that, you listen.

Today

Opti Assist is now available for businesses on Google Workspace.

Same security commitment. Same sovereignty stance. Same operational compliance work that makes governance live inside your tools, not in a binder.

If you've been on the edge of starting an AI governance program because the answer "switch to Microsoft 365" wasn't on the table, today's the day. Opti Assist is free to start. There's no credit card, no sales call, and no platform switch.

A note for our Microsoft 365 customers

Some of you reading this might be wondering whether this changes anything for you. It doesn't, except for the better.

Our Microsoft-native integration isn't going anywhere. All the deep work we've done to connect with the security and data tools you already use stays exactly as it is. The reason we built on Microsoft first is the same reason we'll keep investing there. What's changed isn't your experience of the product. It's who else can now join the conversation, and how much that compounds the value of the platform you're already using.

What this means for the bigger platform

I'll have more to say in the weeks ahead about what this expansion means for the rest of the platform: Opti Core, AI Guardian, Opti Cyber. The short version: we're building a single operational compliance system that meets businesses where they already live. Today is the first step toward that. There will be more.

For now, thank you to the people who told us they wanted in even when they couldn't get in. You're the reason this work happened, and the reason it happened faster.

Try Opti Assist free at orcaopti.ai. Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, both are now home.