Upwind CEO Amiram Shachar (right) and Aegis co-founders Omri Limor and Saar Ankonina. Credit: Omer Guetta for Upwind The cybersecurity industry is increasingly focused on how artificial intelligence can reshape both defensive technology and the threat landscape. Upwind is responding by acquiring AI security startup Aegis and launching a new research and engineering initiative, as first reported by Axios. Aegis co-founders Omri Limor and Saar Ankonina will lead the new Upwind AI Security Labs.
They will join Upwind along with members of the Aegis team. The initiative is intended to advance capabilities addressing security risks associated with AI agents, skills, plugins and attacks generated through AI tools and frontier models. The acquisition expands Upwind’s existing work around securing cloud and AI environments while giving the company a dedicated team focused on emerging AI security challenges. From Aegis startup to Upwind acquisition Limor and Ankonina founded Aegis after beginning their careers together as members of 8200, an intelligence unit focused on offensive cybersecurity.
Their professional relationship evolved over time, including a commander-subordinate relationship before the two eventually became peers. At Aegis, the founders focused on security challenges emerging around AI infrastructure. Their work included efforts to protect against AI-generated attacks such as autonomous exploitation pipelines and large-scale credential harvesting. These can reduce some of the traditional skill barriers associated with cyberattacks.
The relationship between the two companies began as a potential strategic partnership and investment. As the companies worked together over several months, that relationship ultimately led to Upwind acquiring Aegis and establishing the new AI Security Labs. “AI security is developing extremely quickly, and by acquiring Aegis and bringing Omri and Saar on board, we are building a team that can move just as quickly,” said Amiram Shachar, CEO and Co-Founder at Upwind. “The Aegis team brings a deep understanding of the challenges around securing agents, skills, and plugins, and by combining that expertise with Upwind’s existing platform, we can move from research to real-world security capabilities much faster.” Focusing on AI agents and emerging risks The new labs will work across scanning, attack detection and broader AI security capabilities. Upwind says the initiative will combine Aegis’s technology and development work with its existing runtime platform. One area of attention will be the expanding infrastructure surrounding AI agents.
Agents can interact with applications, access information and execute tasks. Skills and plugins can add functionality and introduce additional components that require protection. The labs will research these risks and develop capabilities designed to identify and address them. Upwind also highlighted the importance of secret scanning, both in transit and at rest.
That follows industry findings involving compromised API keys and session tokens being harvested at scale. “We initially built Aegis as a startup to tackle the missing security layer around AI agents, skills and plugins,” said Omri Limor, Co-Founder of Aegis. “After spending several months working together with Upwind, it became clear that joining forces through an acquisition and establishing AI Security Labs inside Upwind would allow us to move much faster and combine our technology with the capabilities Upwind has already built.” For Ankonina, bringing the technology inside Upwind offers a way to expand its reach. “Integrating our technology directly into Upwind’s platform gives us an immediate path to scale,” added Saar Ankonina, Co-Founder of Aegis. “The establishment of AI Security Labs provides the ideal environment to accelerate research and protect enterprise AI workflows.” Building a larger AI security team Upwind AI Security Labs currently has 12 developers and researchers from Aegis and Upwind. The company expects that number to increase to approximately 25 people within the next three months and potentially to 35 as the initiative develops. “We built AI Security Labs on the foundation of the Aegis acquisition with the ambition to create a significant research and engineering capability within Upwind,” said Shachar. “We expect the team to grow from 12 people today to 25 and potentially 35 in the coming months, allowing us to expand our research and accelerate the development of new AI security capabilities.” The expansion reflects the broader objective behind the acquisition: bringing research and product development closer together as AI-related security risks evolve. Turning research into security capabilities Upwind says the labs will focus not only on identifying emerging attack techniques but also on reducing the time required to turn that research into practical security capabilities. By combining Aegis’s team and technology with Upwind’s existing platform and market strategy, the company aims to accelerate that research-to-market process. “As AI transforms both the threat landscape and the speed of modern cyber operations, this is the ideal moment to build, innovate, and lead in cloud and AI security,” added Shachar. “With AI Security Labs, Upwind is reinforcing its mission to protect modern enterprise infrastructure and ensure organizations can safely embrace the next era of AI innovation.” Contributed article.
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