Business · Companies · 7 hrs ago
Cohere signs agreement to acquire AI cybersecurity startup Aisle
Canadian AI company Cohere has signed a letter of intent to acquire Aisle, a startup that uses AI to find weaknesses in software.
Aisle was founded in 2025 by former Avast chief executive Ondřej Vlček and co-founders with experience at Google DeepMind and Anthropic.
The proposed deal would bring Aisle’s Prague engineering hub into Cohere, extending the Canadian company’s presence in Europe.
Aisle’s tools are designed to identify and help fix security weaknesses in important software.
Cohere says the acquisition would strengthen security and threat detection for its business and public-sector customers, which can use its systems on their own infrastructure.
The deal’s terms have not been disclosed.
Cohere has signed a letter of intent, and the acquisition is not yet complete.
Cohere said it signed a letter of intent to acquire AI cybersecurity startup Aisle.
The proposed deal would add Aisle’s software vulnerability detection tools and cybersecurity expertise to Cohere.
Aisle’s Prague engineering hub is expected to become Cohere’s Prague office, and its approximately 50 employees are expected to join Cohere.
Aisle CEO Ondřej Vlček is set to lead a new Cohere cybersecurity unit, with co-founders Jaya Baloo and Stanislav Fort taking security roles.
The Globe and Mail describes Aisle as San Francisco-based, while BetaKit says it is Prague-based.
- Who
- Cohere and AI cybersecurity startup Aisle.
- What
- Cohere signed a letter of intent to acquire Aisle. The deal’s terms were not disclosed.
- When
- Thursday, October 15, 2026.
- Where
- Aisle’s engineering hub is in Prague. The Globe and Mail calls the company San Francisco-based, while BetaKit calls it Prague-based.
- Why
- Cohere says the deal would strengthen security and threat detection for enterprise and public-sector clients.
This story does not have two clearly opposing sides.
Aisle was founded by Ondřej Vlček and co-founders from Google DeepMind and Anthropic.
Cohere announced it had signed a letter of intent to acquire Aisle.
- Proposed acquisition
- Letter of intent signed
- Aisle employees
- Approximately 50
- Prague hub
- Expected to become Cohere’s Prague office
- New unit
- Cohere Cyber
- Aisle vulnerabilities claim
- More than 500 new bugs found in widely used software in its first year
4 sources
What people are saying
There are meaningful gaps in solutions available for [cyber] defenders, and many are having to make the difficult tradeoff between securing their systems and exposing their [intellectual property] and telemetry to a provider that does “zero data-retention” performatively
Increasingly capable AI systems are transforming both cybersecurity and the threats organizations face, and defensive capabilities must advance just as quickly