Cohere Signs Letter of Intent to Buy AI Cybersecurity Startup AISLE
Cohere said Thursday it signed a letter of intent to acquire AISLE, a San Francisco startup that uses AI to find software flaws. The deal would add cybersecurity to the company Cohere is building through its merger with Germany's Aleph Alpha.
Canadian artificial intelligence lab Cohere said Thursday it has signed a letter of intent to acquire AISLE, a San Francisco-based startup that uses AI to detect vulnerabilities in software.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The tie-up would add cybersecurity to the business Cohere is assembling through its merger with Germany’s Aleph Alpha, a combination reported to be worth about $20 billion. It would also extend Cohere’s European footprint with AISLE’s engineering hub in Prague, the companies said.
Cohere said the deal was aimed at strengthening the combined group’s security and threat-detection work for enterprise and public-sector clients, with private deployment available on a customer’s own systems.
“Increasingly capable AI systems are transforming both cybersecurity and the threats organizations face, and defensive capabilities must advance just as quickly,” Cohere said in its announcement.
A startup built around bug hunting
AISLE was founded in 2025 by Ondrej Vlcek, the former chief executive of Czech antivirus maker Avast, with co-founders from Google DeepMind and Anthropic.
The startup said its AI found more than 500 new bugs in widely used software in its first year, including 12 vulnerabilities in OpenSSL, the free program that encrypts internet traffic for banks, governments and messaging apps. The flaws were fixed after their discovery, the company said.
Cohere said the acquisition reflected continued investment in Europe and would deepen its presence in the region.
Reporting based on coverage by Reuters.
