Robust Intelligence
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
Some sections are still being researched1 / 4
Sections to complete：02
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Robust Intelligence was a US-based AI security startup founded in 2019 as a Harvard University spinout by professor Yaron Singer and his former student Kojin Oshiba. It built an 'AI firewall' platform that stress-tested enterprise AI models and protected them — and the data they fed on — against prompt injection, data poisoning, jailbreaking and other attacks, across the development-to-production lifecycle. It raised $44 million in total, including a $14 million seed/Series A led by Sequoia and a $30 million Series B led by Tiger Global. In 2024 it was acquired by Cisco.
02 / FAILURE REASONS
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
Yaron Singer and Kojin Oshiba founded Robust Intelligence as a Harvard spinout for AI model security.
- Series B
Robust Intelligence raised a $30 million Series B led by Tiger Global.
- Acquired
Cisco announced the acquisition of Robust Intelligence to accelerate its Security Cloud roadmap.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
On August 27, 2024, Cisco announced it was acquiring Robust Intelligence for an undisclosed price.
- 02
The startup's AI model security and governance platform was folded into the Cisco Security Cloud, giving Cisco's customers visibility into AI traffic and protection against AI-specific threats.