Pomegra
Cohere has signed a letter of intent to acquire AISLE, the AI vulnerability-hunting startup, to launch a new Cohere Cyber division.
Key Takeaways
- Cohere signed a letter of intent on October 15, 2026 to buy AISLE; price, structure and closing date are undisclosed.
- AISLE's CEO, Ondřej Vlček, becomes senior vice-president of the new Cohere Cyber unit, and about 50 staff join.
- The deal follows Cohere's September agreement to merge with Germany's Aleph Alpha at a reported $20 billion valuation.
Lead
Cohere, the Toronto-based enterprise AI developer, signed a letter of intent on October 15, 2026 to acquire AISLE, a cybersecurity startup split between San Francisco and Prague. The company did not disclose the price, deal structure or expected closing date. A letter of intent is non-binding, so the transaction can still change shape or fall through before definitive documents are signed.
AISLE builds AI systems that find and fix vulnerabilities in software. Cohere plans to fold the team into a new unit, Cohere Cyber, which will sell security tools to governments and large enterprises.
What Is Cohere Buying in AISLE?
Cohere is buying a vulnerability-discovery and remediation system with a public track record, plus roughly 50 full-time employees. AISLE was founded in 2025 and emerged from stealth in October 2025. It says its AI found more than 500 previously unknown vulnerabilities across more than 100 code bases in its first year.
The most visible results came from OpenSSL, the encryption library used by banks, governments and messaging apps. Across three security releases, AISLE's system found 20 of the 23 vulnerabilities disclosed, and 10 of its generated fixes were accepted into official releases. It was credited with all 12 vulnerabilities addressed in OpenSSL's January 2026 release.
AISLE has not announced a priced funding round. Its website lists six angel investors, including Google chief scientist Jeff Dean, Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf and Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel. The company has disclosed no valuation.
Who Joins Cohere and What Changes?
All three AISLE co-founders get senior roles at Cohere. Vlček, the former CEO of Czech antivirus maker Avast, becomes senior vice-president of Cohere Cyber. Jaya Baloo, a veteran chief information security officer, becomes Cohere's global CISO. Stanislav Fort, who previously worked at Anthropic and Google DeepMind, becomes vice-president of AI security.
AISLE's Prague headquarters, which houses its engineering hub, will become Cohere's Prague office. Cohere has also promised a substantial long-term investment there. Cohere co-founder Ivan Zhang said there are meaningful gaps in the solutions available to cyber defenders.
Why Is Cohere Moving Into Cybersecurity Now?
Cohere is buying capability it lacks, and its leadership has said so. Chief executive Aidan Gomez has acknowledged that Cohere's models trail those of OpenAI and Anthropic in coding and cybersecurity. Buying a team with demonstrated results is faster than building one.
This is a strategic purchase more than an acquihire. AISLE has a working product and a record of accepted fixes in widely used open-source code. Still, the founders' own credentials, including Baloo's CISO background and Fort's frontier-lab experience, are a large part of the value.
The timing fits a pattern. Cohere acquired Reliant AI, with operations in Montreal and Berlin, in May 2026. In September it signed a definitive combination agreement with Aleph Alpha, formalizing an April framework. That deal values the combined company at about $20 billion, roughly triple Cohere's $7 billion valuation of September 2025. It is also about 83 times the $240 million in annual recurring revenue Cohere last disclosed, in February 2026.
How Does AISLE Fit Cohere's Sovereign AI Pitch?
Security tooling suits Cohere's positioning toward governments and regulated industries that want AI under local control. The combined company will be headquartered in Berlin and Toronto, with more than 1,000 staff, and the Aleph Alpha merger still needs regulatory approval before closing later in 2026. Adding a Prague engineering base extends that footprint further into central Europe.
Government customers tend to buy security products as part of broader platform deals. A cyber unit gives Cohere's sales teams another product to bundle with its language models.
What Comes Next?
The immediate question is whether the letter of intent converts into a signed agreement, and on what terms. Cohere has not said whether the price will be paid in cash, stock or both. Given the pending Aleph Alpha merger and Cohere's reported Series E talks of $2 billion to $3 billion, stock is a plausible currency, but neither company has said so.
Integration is the larger risk. Cohere is absorbing a German lab, a Montreal and Berlin team and now a Prague-San Francisco startup within about six months. Retaining AISLE's researchers while the product moves from open-source bug hunting to enterprise and government sales will test Cohere's execution.
Competitors will watch the output. AI-driven vulnerability discovery is crowded, and frontier labs are building their own tools. If Cohere Cyber produces measurable results at scale, the purchase will look like a shrewd shortcut.
Outlook
Cohere is paying for credibility in a field where its models lag, using a team with 500-plus disclosed vulnerabilities and a dominant share of recent OpenSSL fixes. Price, structure and timing remain open, and the deal sits alongside a large merger and a major financing. The next markers are a definitive agreement, regulatory clearance for the Aleph Alpha combination, and the first Cohere Cyber product launches.
