Cohere signs acquisition letter of intent with AISLE

AISLE says it and Cohere signed a letter of intent for Cohere to acquire AISLE.[1] The companies intend to bring autonomous security systems closer to the development of frontier-class foundation models.[1] AISLE describes the combination’s goal as defending software infrastructure on which democratic societies depend.[1] The announcement presents the agreement as a proposed transaction, rather than a completed acquisition.[1]

AISLE says it launched out of stealth almost exactly one year before its announcement, aiming to build autonomous AI systems to find and remediate vulnerabilities in critical software.[1] The company cites more than 500 previously unknown vulnerabilities assigned CVEs across more than 100 codebases.[1] It also says its systems found all 12 vulnerabilities in OpenSSL’s January security release and 18 of the 24 CVEs in curl’s latest release.[1]

AISLE CEO Ondrej Vlcek will join Cohere as senior vice-president of Cohere Cyber, a new unit focused on cybersecurity solutions for Cohere customers.[1] Co-founder Jaya Baloo will become Cohere’s global chief information security officer, and CTO and Chief Scientist Stanislav Fort will become vice-president of AI security.[1] Fort will lead AI security research and connect that research with core model development and training.[1] Cohere says it will make a substantial investment in Prague to expand AISLE’s presence and establish the city as its global hub for AI cybersecurity systems.[2] AISLE’s Prague headquarters is set to become Cohere’s Prague office when the transaction is completed.[1]

The financial terms of the proposed acquisition were not disclosed.[2] AISLE says all three co-founders will continue working on the mission with the broader team.[1] BetaKit reports that AISLE’s approximately 50 full-time employees will join Cohere, citing an AISLE spokesperson.[3] AISLE was founded in 2024 and built AI systems that detect and help address software vulnerabilities.[2] The Globe and Mail describes AISLE as focused on defending open-source critical infrastructure.[2]