Cohere moves to buy AI cybersecurity startup AISLE

By Leo Marchandon

Oct 15 (Reuters) - Canadian AI lab Cohere said on Thursday it had signed a letter of intent to buy AISLE, a San Francisco-based cybersecurity startup that uses AI to detect vulnerabilities in software.

The tie-up would add cybersecurity to the business entity Cohere is assembling through its merger with Germany's Aleph Alpha, a combination reported to be worth about $20 billion, and extend its European footprint with AISLE's engineering hub in Prague.

Cohere said the acquisition reflected its continued investment in Europe and would deepen its presence across the region, strengthening European AI.

The deal is aimed at boosting the combined group's security and threat detection capabilities for enterprise and public sector clients, with private deployment available on the customer's own system. 

"Increasingly capable AI systems are transforming both cybersecurity and the threats organizations face, and defensive capabilities must advance just as quickly," Cohere said.

AISLE was founded in 2025 by Ondrej Vlcek, former CEO of Czech antivirus maker Avast, with co-founders from Google DeepMind and Anthropic.

AISLE said its AI found more than 500 new bugs in widely used software in its first year, including 12 vulnerabilities in OpenSSL, a free program that encrypts internet traffic for banks, governments and messaging apps, which were fixed after their discovery.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

(Reporting by Leo Marchandon in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)