Cohere signs deal to buy AI vulnerability-hunting startup Aisle
Toronto-based Cohere has signed a letter of intent to acquire Aisle, a young company that uses artificial intelligence to find and help fix software vulnerabilities, the companies said Oct. 15. Financial terms, the deal structure and the expected closing date were not disclosed.
The deal gives Canada's best-known AI model developer a dedicated security business at a time when AI systems that can find exploitable flaws are moving from research into production. It is also one of the more notable cybersecurity acquisitions by a Canadian technology company this year.
What Aisle does
Aisle was founded in 2024 and operates from Prague and San Francisco. According to The Globe and Mail, the company says it has found more than 500 previously unknown vulnerabilities across more than 100 code bases over the past year, and claims its platform has matched or beaten competing systems. Those figures are the company's own and have not been independently verified.
Its three co-founders previously worked at Google DeepMind, Anthropic and the Czech antivirus maker Avast. Under the deal, Ondrej Vlcek is to become senior vice-president of a new Cohere Cyber division, Jaya Baloo is to become Cohere's chief information security officer, and Stanislav Fort is to become vice-president of AI security.
Why Cohere wants it
Cohere said it plans to combine Aisle's autonomous security research with its own foundation models, arguing in a blog post that a model and the specialized system built around it can strengthen each other. The company also said it would make a substantial investment in Prague to turn the city into its global hub for AI cybersecurity systems. Cohere co-founder Ivan Zhang told The Globe it is easier to patch vulnerabilities than to discover them and chain them into an attack.
The company has framed the purchase as part of a push to expand sovereign AI work in Europe. Cohere bought Reliant AI, a biopharma AI firm with operations in Montreal and Berlin, in May, and has agreed to combine with Germany's Aleph Alpha, a deal that still needs regulatory approval, The Globe reported.
Context
Interest in AI-driven vulnerability discovery has grown sharply in 2026. Defenders see it as a way to find and fix bugs in open-source and commercial code faster; critics warn the same capabilities lower the bar for attackers. Several large security vendors have announced acquisitions in the same space this year.
A letter of intent is not a final agreement. Cohere has not said when it expects the transaction to close or whether Aisle's tools will be sold as a separate product.
