Lakera

Security for AI acquired

Market readinessHow well the company can compete in its security market, scored across eight dimensions against public evidence. Established: Market readiness of 25 to 30, the typical band where most analyzed companies land.
DefensibilityHow well the company holds its position if competitors catch up on features, scored across seven dimensions against public evidence. Defensible: Defensibility of 15 or above. A position that stays hard for rivals to replicate.
Founded 2021
Funding $30M
Last updated 2026-07-09

All analysis was generated autonomously, without human review. Scores are analytical opinions drawn from the cited public sources, without hands-on testing. They are not audits, certifications, investment reports, purchasing advice, or evaluations of quality.

Executive Summary

Lakera is a Zurich AI security company, founded in 2021, that screens prompts, model responses, and agent tool calls for AI-specific attacks, with detectors trained on Gandalf, a public attack game that drew more than 80 million attempts from over a million players. Check Point completed its purchase on October 22, 2025. Check Point's annual filing puts the price near $201.8 million and allocates $150.1 million to goodwill and $44 million to core technology against only $4.4 million for customer relationships, while recording the revenue it inherited as immaterial. Check Point booked far more value in technology and goodwill than in the customer relationships it acquired. Lakera's Zurich office became Check Point's AI security research center.

Sourced Details

Description Lakera is a security platform for GenAI and agent applications that provides runtime protection against prompt injections, data leakage, and jailbreaks, and red-teams AI systems to surface vulnerabilities. [f1]
Acquisition Check Point Software Technologies, announced 2025-09-16 [f2]
Founded 2021 [f3]
HQ Zurich, Switzerland [f4]
Funding $30M total [f5]
Latest funding $20M Series A led by Atomico, July 2024 [f3]
Deployment SaaS, Self-hosted [f6]
Compliance GDPR, SOC 2 [f6]

Products

Product What it does
Lakera Runtime guardrails plus adversarial testing for LLM and agent apps, screening prompts, responses, and tool calls for prompt injection, jailbreaks, and data leakage.

Matrix Coverage

AI Defense Matrix

GovernIdentifyProtectDetectRespondRecover
AI-Workload Platforms Inference servers, training platforms, vector DB platforms, and the model-loading supply chain.
AI Orchestration Tools Agentic orchestration tools, plus their plugins, skills, hooks, system prompts, scaffolding, harnesses, configuration settings, and MCP clients on user devices.
AI-Generated Code Code produced by AI tools, AI-assisted reviews, AI-generated infrastructure-as-code and tests, and vibe-coded apps that bypass CI/CD.
AI Gateways & Routers MCP proxies and gateways, LLM routers, outbound AI-service traffic, shadow AI egress, and model-registry traffic.
AI Model Model weights, fine-tuning checkpoints, model cards, registries, AIBOM, and the third-party LLMs your enterprise consumes.
Training Data Datasets used for training, fine-tuning, and continued learning.
Runtime AI Data User prompts, inference inputs, RAG content, vector DB content, persistent agent memory, and interaction history.
AI Agent Identities AI agents as non-human principals, plus credentials, keys, permission scopes, service accounts, and delegation chains across agents and tools.

Lakera provides runtime guardrails and adversarial testing for LLM and agent apps, screening prompts, responses, and tool calls for prompt injection, jailbreaks, and data leakage. It is mapped to the AI Defense Matrix. [f7]

Market Readiness

How well the company can compete in its security market, scored across eight dimensions against public evidence.

Established 27 /40 Established: Market readiness of 25 to 30, the typical band where most analyzed companies land.
Dimension Score
Problem Clarity How precisely the company defines its problem, with evidence the problem exists at the scale claimed. 3/5
Capability Depth How specific the technical capabilities are, with evidence beyond marketing claims such as docs, demos, and third-party validation. 4/5
Market Timing Whether the market is ready for this product, with evidence that buyers are actively seeking solutions. 4/5
Team Credibility Demonstrated domain expertise with public signals such as prior exits, publications, and industry recognition. 4/5
GTM Proof Evidence of actual traction (customers, revenue signals, partnerships) beyond stated intentions. 3/5
Funding Efficiency Whether funding matches go-to-market ambition, with signs of capital-efficient growth. 3/5
Category Clarity Whether the company creates or fits a recognizable category that buyers can quickly place in their stack. 3/5
Incumbent Defensibility How vulnerable the core value proposition is to absorption as a feature by a platform vendor. 3/5

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Business Risks
Problem & Market
Product Capabilities
Competitive Positioning
Go-to-Market & Traction
Team & Credibility
Trust Readiness
Competitors

Strategy Deep Dive

A closer look at the company's product strategy, measuring how defensible it is against market forces and examining the eight areas behind it.

Defensibility

Defensible 15 /21 Defensible: Defensibility of 15 or above. A position that stays hard for rivals to replicate. press the advantage

Dimension Score
Value Delivery Does the product sell software as the product, or judgment, trust, or accountability with software as the delivery mechanism. 1/3
Switching Cost How expensive leaving is for a customer: data portability, integrations, learned workflows, network effects, regulatory data residency. 2/3
Compliance Moat Whether certifications, liability acceptance, or audit trails block an easy replacement. 1/3
Problem Complexity Whether the product requires ML, optimization, real-time systems, or years of specialized expertise. 3/3
Buyer Profile Whether buyers are SMB operators, mid-market IT teams, or regulated enterprises and governments with procurement gates. 3/3
Layer Whether the product is an end-user application, a platform with application features, or infrastructure other applications depend on. 2/3
Proprietary Data, Content, or IP Whether the product accumulates datasets, content licenses, or IP that a rival cannot recreate from scratch. 3/3

Unlock the Full Analysis

The reasoning for the scores, the strategy deep dive, the business risks, and more. AI access comes with the purchase, so your AI tools can read the full profile too. You keep 12 months of access.

One-time purchase: $20 per profile.

Unlock

Reading several? Unlock the entire catalog.

Strategic Market Segmentation
Product Capabilities & AI Advantages
Sales Engagement & Go-to-Market
Pricing Model
Product Delivery & Operations
Earning Customers' Trust
Platform Strategy & Ecosystem Positioning
Team & Execution Capability

Sources

Company Detail Sources (7)
Id Source Tier Accessed
f1 Lakera: The AI-Native Security Platform to Accelerate GenAI official 2026-07-09
f2 SEC Check Point FY2025 Form 20-F (Lakera purchase price allocation, closed October 22, 2025) regulatory 2026-06-29
f3 TechCrunch on Lakera’s $20M Series A press 2026-06-29
f4 Calcalist Tech on Check Point’s $300M Lakera acquisition press 2026-06-11
f5 BankInfoSecurity on Check Point’s Lakera purchase press 2026-06-29
f6 AI Defense Matrix Catalog entry other 2026-06-08
f7 AI Defense Matrix Catalog mapping other 2026-06-23
Profile Analysis Sources (19)
Id Source Tier Accessed
s1 Lakera homepage
“Dropbox uses AI Agent Security as our security solution to help safeguard our LLM-powered applications, secure and protect user data, and uphold the reliability and trustworthiness of our intelligent features.”
official 2026-06-29
s2 Lakera Guard (AI Agent Security) product page
“Secure AI Agents from Discovery to Runtime”
official 2026-06-29
s3 Lakera Red (AI Red Teaming) product page
“Strengthening Agentic AI in NVIDIA's NeMo Agent Toolkit. How Lakera and NVIDIA built red teaming capabilities for Agents.”
official 2026-06-29
s4 Lakera security and privacy overview
“We undergo regular independent audits to verify that our controls and practices meet stringent SOC-2 requirements.”
official 2026-06-29
s5 Lakera Trust Center
“SOC 2. CSA STAR Level One. HIPAA. Lakera SOC2 Type 2 Report. Lakera AI AG - HIPAA Report 2025.pdf. Lakera AI CSA CAIQ v.4.0.3.”
official 2026-06-29
s6 Lakera docs changelog (Check Point AI Security branding)
“Changelog | Check Point AI Security. For AI agents: a documentation index is available at the root level at /llms.txt.”
official 2026-06-29
s7 Lakera pricing page (Community and Enterprise)
“The default pricing plan (Community) provides free access to a limited number of requests. Contact sales to update your plan and get access to advanced features.”
official 2026-06-29
s8 Check Point announcement of the Lakera acquisition
“Delivers detection rates above 98 percent with sub-50ms latency and false positives below 0.5 percent, ensuring enterprises can protect AI-driven workloads without impacting speed or accuracy.”
official 2026-06-29
s9 TechCrunch: Lakera raises $20M Series A
“Founded out of Zurich in 2021, Lakera officially launched last October with $10 million in funding”
press 2026-06-29
s10 CTech: Check Point's estimated $300 million Lakera acquisition
“The value of the deal was not disclosed, but it is estimated at $300 million.”
press 2026-06-29
s11 CSO Online: Check Point acquires Lakera (undisclosed sum, Q4 2025 close)
“Proven at scale, its technology already protects advanced enterprise AI deployments using its Gandalf adversarial engine, which leverages over 80 million attack patterns.”
press 2026-06-29
s12 BankInfoSecurity: Check Point's Lakera purchase
“Lakera, founded in 2021, employs 60 people and has raised $30 million of outside funding, having most recently completed a $20 million Series A round led by Atomico in July 2024.”
press 2026-06-29
s13 SEC: Check Point FY2025 Form 20-F, Lakera purchase price allocation
“Goodwill $150.1 Core technology 7 Years 44.0 Customer relationship 1 Years 4.4 Trademark 1 Years 0.3 Net assumed assets 3.0 Total $201.8”
regulatory 2026-06-29
s14 SEC: Check Point FY2025 Form 20-F, Lakera revenue immaterial and October 22, 2025 close
“On October 22, 2025, the Company completed the acquisition of all outstanding shares of Lakera AI AG. From the Lakera Acquisition Date to December 31, 2025, the consolidated statements of income include immaterial revenue and operating results attributable to Lakera.”
regulatory 2026-06-29
s15 Moneyhouse: Lakera AI AG, Spreitenbach (Swiss commercial register CHE-153.024.821)
“The company Lakera AI AG is registered under the UID CHE-153.024.821.”
regulatory 2026-06-29
s16 InjecGuard: Benchmarking and Mitigating Over-defense in Prompt Injection Guardrail Models (arXiv 2410.22770)
“We employ five existing prompt guard models as baselines: Fmops, Deepset, PromptGuard, ProtectAIv2, and LakeraGuard ... we utilize benign data from both the PINT benchmark LakeraAI”
research 2026-06-29
s17 ChatInject: Abusing Chat Templates for Prompt Injection in LLM Agents (arXiv 2509.22830)
“The Lakera Guard model is a proprietary prompt-injection detector developed by Lakera AI. Lakera Guard combines proprietary AI detectors and rules trained on large-scale adversarial datasets collected from real-world red-teaming and from Lakera's Gandalf prompt-injection challenges.”
research 2026-06-29
s18 F5 blog: F5 completes acquisition of CalypsoAI, introduces F5 AI Guardrails and F5 AI Red Team (September 29, 2025)
“Today, F5 is pleased to announce that we have completed our acquisition of CalypsoAI, a pioneer at the frontier of AI security, and we are introducing the latest addition to securing our digital roads: F5 AI Guardrails, comprehensive runtime security for AI models and agents.”
official 2026-07-02
s19 Palo Alto Networks press release: Palo Alto Networks Completes Acquisition of Protect AI (July 22, 2025)
“Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW), the global cybersecurity leader, today announced it has completed its acquisition of Protect AI, an innovative leader in securing Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications and models.”
official 2026-07-02
Deep-Dive Sources (17)
Id Source Tier Accessed
s1 Lakera homepage
“Dropbox uses AI Agent Security as our security solution to help safeguard our LLM-powered applications, secure and protect user data, and uphold the reliability and trustworthiness of our intelligent features.”
official 2026-06-29
s2 Lakera Guard (AI Agent Security) product page
“Secure AI Agents from Discovery to Runtime”
official 2026-06-29
s3 Lakera Red (AI Red Teaming) product page
“Strengthening Agentic AI in NVIDIA's NeMo Agent Toolkit. How Lakera and NVIDIA built red teaming capabilities for Agents.”
official 2026-06-29
s4 Lakera security and privacy overview
“We undergo regular independent audits to verify that our controls and practices meet stringent SOC-2 requirements.”
official 2026-06-29
s5 Lakera Trust Center
“SOC 2. CSA STAR Level One. HIPAA. Lakera SOC2 Type 2 Report. Lakera AI AG - HIPAA Report 2025.pdf. Lakera AI CSA CAIQ v.4.0.3.”
official 2026-06-29
s6 Lakera docs changelog (Check Point AI Security branding)
“Changelog | Check Point AI Security. For AI agents: a documentation index is available at the root level at /llms.txt.”
official 2026-06-29
s7 Lakera pricing page (Community and Enterprise)
“The default pricing plan (Community) provides free access to a limited number of requests. Contact sales to update your plan and get access to advanced features.”
official 2026-06-29
s8 Check Point announcement of the Lakera acquisition
“Lakera secures LLMs, generative AI, and agents across prompts, RAG, and MCP, providing real-time defenses against prompt injection, data leakage, and model manipulation.”
official 2026-06-29
s9 TechCrunch: Lakera raises $20M Series A
“Founded out of Zurich in 2021, Lakera officially launched last October with $10 million in funding”
press 2026-06-29
s10 CTech: Check Point's estimated $300 million Lakera acquisition
“The value of the deal was not disclosed, but it is estimated at $300 million.”
press 2026-06-29
s11 CSO Online: Check Point acquires Lakera (undisclosed sum, Q4 2025 close)
“Proven at scale, its technology already protects advanced enterprise AI deployments using its Gandalf adversarial engine, which leverages over 80 million attack patterns.”
press 2026-06-29
s12 BankInfoSecurity: Check Point's Lakera purchase
“Lakera, founded in 2021, employs 60 people and has raised $30 million of outside funding, having most recently completed a $20 million Series A round led by Atomico in July 2024.”
press 2026-06-29
s13 SEC: Check Point FY2025 Form 20-F, Lakera purchase price allocation
“Goodwill $150.1 Core technology 7 Years 44.0 Customer relationship 1 Years 4.4 Trademark 1 Years 0.3 Net assumed assets 3.0 Total $201.8”
regulatory 2026-06-29
s14 SEC: Check Point FY2025 Form 20-F, Lakera revenue immaterial and October 22, 2025 close
“On October 22, 2025, the Company completed the acquisition of all outstanding shares of Lakera AI AG. From the Lakera Acquisition Date to December 31, 2025, the consolidated statements of income include immaterial revenue and operating results attributable to Lakera.”
regulatory 2026-06-29
s15 Moneyhouse: Lakera AI AG, Spreitenbach (Swiss commercial register CHE-153.024.821)
“The company Lakera AI AG is registered under the UID CHE-153.024.821.”
regulatory 2026-06-29
s16 InjecGuard: Benchmarking and Mitigating Over-defense in Prompt Injection Guardrail Models (arXiv 2410.22770)
“We employ five existing prompt guard models as baselines: Fmops, Deepset, PromptGuard, ProtectAIv2, and LakeraGuard ... we utilize benign data from both the PINT benchmark LakeraAI”
research 2026-06-29
s17 ChatInject: Abusing Chat Templates for Prompt Injection in LLM Agents (arXiv 2509.22830)
“The Lakera Guard model is a proprietary prompt-injection detector developed by Lakera AI. Lakera Guard combines proprietary AI detectors and rules trained on large-scale adversarial datasets collected from real-world red-teaming and from Lakera's Gandalf prompt-injection challenges.”
research 2026-06-29

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