Cohere to acquire AI cybersecurity startup Aisle

Explainer

Canadian artificial intelligence company Cohere Inc. has signed a letter of intent to acquire cybersecurity startup Aisle.

Toronto-based Cohere announced the deal on Thursday, though it did not disclose the financial terms, structure or expected closing date.

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Aisle, which is based in Prague and was founded last year, builds AI systems that detect and help address vulnerabilities in software.

"Aisle has been focused on defending the critical infrastructure of the open source ecosystem, and it’s done that better than many of the more well known efforts," Cohere chief executive officer Aidan Gomez wrote on LinkedIn.

What does Aisle do?

Aisle said it had found more than 500 previously unknown vulnerabilities in more than 100 code bases in the past year.

It said its platform has matched or outperformed competing systems.

The company claims all 12 vulnerabilities patched in the January security update for the cryptographic communications library OpenSSL were discovered by Aisle, and that it identified 18 of the 24 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures fixed in the latest version of the data transfer tool curl.

Cohere emphasized the credibility of Aisle's detection capabilities, noting that the results have been independently verified by the respective software developers.

What is Cohere's plan for Aisle?

Cohere said it will combine Aisle's autonomous security research with its AI models.

"The capabilities of a foundation model and the specialized system built around it can reinforce each other," the company said in a blog post.

Cohere plans to integrate Aisle's research into its own model development and training processes, using verifiable security challenges for model evaluation and improvement.

The company also said it will make a substantial investment in Prague to expand Aisle's existing presence and establish the city as its global hub for AI cybersecurity systems.

Aisle's engineering hub in Prague is expected to become a Cohere office upon deal completion.

"Increasingly capable AI systems are transforming both cybersecurity and the threats organizations face, and defensive capabilities must evolve at the same pace," Cohere stated.

Cohere views the acquisition as part of its sovereign AI infrastructure strategy, aiming to build an integrated foundation that combines models, AI agent applications, secure deployment infrastructure, and advanced security.

A key selling point is that customers can operate AI in private clouds, on-premises environments, and fully air-gapped settings.

Who will lead the new cybersecurity division?

Aisle co-founder Ondrej Vlcek will become senior vice-president of Cohere Cyber, a newly established division providing customer-facing security products.

Fellow co-founder Jaya Baloo will assume the role of Cohere's global chief information security officer, while chief technology officer and chief scientist Stanislav Fort will become vice-president of AI security.

The three co-founders have previously worked at Google DeepMind, Anthropic and Czech cybersecurity company Avast.

Mr. Vlcek wrote on LinkedIn that Cohere and Aisle began talking earlier this year and realized that combining would be a "natural fit."

Why is Cohere moving into cybersecurity now?

The cybersecurity risks of AI have been heightened since Anthropic announced its Mythos model earlier this year, which the company said was adept at finding software vulnerabilities.

More recently, businesses, governments and regulators have become deeply concerned about instances of AI agents breaking free of testing sandboxes to access the internet.

Agents from OpenAI, for example, have infiltrated the systems of the Australian government and AI company Hugging Face, while an Anthropic agent submitted a false homicide tip to the Philadelphia police.

"You might think, ‘Oh, this is a renaissance for cyber attackers. They have these models that just exploit systems,’" Cohere co-founder Ivan Zhang said in an interview. But companies engaged in cyber defense have an advantage, he continued. "It’s actually easier to patch vulnerabilities than it is to discover them and chain them together to attack a target."

Cohere's decision appears to be driven by the need to benchmark against AI giants and the shrinking window between vulnerability discovery and exploitation.

How does this fit with Cohere's other deals?

Aisle is not Cohere's first acquisition.

In May, it announced the purchase of biopharma company Reliant AI, which has operations in Montreal and Berlin.

Cohere also announced a deal to combine with German AI company Aleph Alpha this year, which still requires regulatory approval.

The acquisition adds cybersecurity as a new pillar to the business entity Cohere is building through its merger with Aleph Alpha.

That merger has been reported to be valued at approximately $20 billion.

The Globe and Mail previously reported that Cohere is in talks to raise upwards of US$3-billion, including funds from the Canadian and German governments that would value the company at US$20-billion.

The companies are also pitching the deal as a sign of the deepening ties between Canada and Europe.

"I’ve been hearing how Europe is behind in AI, and how Canada is behind in AI," Mr. Vlcek wrote. "We can either keep complaining about it, or do something about it."

With files from The Globe and Mail, BigGo Finance and Canadian Manufacturing