Cohere signs letter of intent to acquire Czech cybersecurity startup Aisle

Toronto-based artificial intelligence company Cohere signed a letter of intent on Oct. 15, 2026, to acquire Prague-based AI cybersecurity startup Aisle, according to BetaKit.

Under the agreement, Aisle’s approximately 50 full-time employees will join Cohere. Aisle’s headquarters and engineering hub in Prague will serve as Cohere’s official office in Czechia.

Aisle creates software that uses artificial intelligence models to identify and fix security weaknesses in critical computer programs. The acquisition is intended to make Cohere’s artificial intelligence platforms for enterprise clients and governments more resilient against cybersecurity threats.

Aisle’s leadership team will join a newly created business unit named Cohere Cyber. Aisle chief executive officer Ondřej Vlček will serve as senior vice-president of the unit. Co-founder Jaya Baloo will become Cohere’s global chief information security officer, and co-founder and chief technology officer Stanislav Fort will become vice-president of artificial intelligence security.

“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,” Cohere co-founder Ivan Zhang wrote in a social media post on X. He added that the acquisition will “continue to empower defenders with a truly sovereign platform that they can fully trust to secure their most critical systems.”

The transaction comes as artificial intelligence security threats attract increased attention from governments and corporate buyers. Security disclosures in recent months highlighted hacking incidents involving OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, as well as an attempted agentic hack targeting Library and Archives Canada.

Aisle was established one year ago by Vlček, who previously served as chief executive of antivirus firm Avast, alongside Baloo and Fort, who formerly worked at Anthropic and DeepMind. In a recent test, Aisle’s software detected 18 out of 24 vulnerabilities in curl, a widely used data transfer tool.

The deal expands Cohere’s presence in Europe. Cohere has also agreed to acquire Germany’s Aleph Alpha, subject to regulatory approvals, and previously bought Montréal- and Berlin-based startup Reliant AI.