Cohere to buy cybersecurity firm Aisle, form Cohere Cyber

Toronto-based AI company Cohere has signed a letter of intent to buy Aisle, a San Francisco and Prague cybersecurity startup, and plans to build a new security division around it, the company announced Thursday.

Cohere did not disclose the price, the deal structure or an expected closing date, the Canadian Press reported. Because only a letter of intent has been signed, the transaction is not final.

Aisle builds AI systems that find previously unknown software security flaws, verify them and help develop fixes, according to The Logic. The company was founded in 2025 by Ondrej Vlcek, the former chief executive of Czech antivirus maker Avast, with co-founders Stanislav Fort and Jaya Baloo.

If the deal closes, Vlcek would become senior vice-president of Cohere Cyber, a new unit that sells cybersecurity tools to government and business customers, The Logic reported. Baloo would become Cohere’s global chief information security officer. Fort, who previously worked at Anthropic and Google DeepMind, would lead AI security research and work with Cohere chief technology officer Ivan Zhang to build that research into model training. Aisle’s Prague headquarters would become a Cohere office.

Cohere said it will make a substantial long-term investment in Prague to expand Aisle, according to the Canadian Press. The company tied the deal to its work on sovereign AI and its investment in Europe.

The purchase would be the latest in a run of European moves. Cohere agreed in September to combine with German AI company Aleph Alpha, and in May it bought Reliant AI, which operates in Montreal and Berlin, The Logic reported.

The security push fills a gap that Cohere’s chief executive has acknowledged publicly. Aidan Gomez told The Logic in September that Cohere’s models trail those of OpenAI and Anthropic, particularly in coding and cybersecurity. “There’s a gap today, and we want to work to close that,” Gomez said.

For Canadian customers, the timing matters because Cohere has been selling to regulated organizations that want AI they can run on their own infrastructure. The Logic reported that the company positions itself as an alternative for buyers wary of relying on U.S. tech giants or Chinese AI developers, including customers who run the technology on systems not connected to the internet. Security tooling built into the models is a natural fit for that pitch.

Cohere has been expanding its Canadian business in recent weeks. It opened a third Canadian office in Ottawa on Oct. 9, launched its North 2 agent platform for enterprises on Oct. 6, and signed a $25-million AI collaboration with TD Bank on Sept. 23.

It remains unclear what Cohere will pay and when the deal is expected to close. Neither the Canadian Press nor The Logic reported comment from Aisle’s founders beyond the planned roles, and no Canadian regulator has commented on the proposed purchase.

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Via the Canadian Press (CP24, Oct. 15) and The Logic (Oct. 15).