Exclusive: Aslan raises $20.8M for AI undercover agents
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Aslan, a startup building AI agents that act as operatives in national security missions, is publicly launching today after raising $20.8 million in funding, the company first shared with Axios.
Why it matters: The company offers agents for the FBI and wider intelligence community that can pose as analysts in underground criminal forums.
Driving the news: Founded last year, Aslan provides a harness for the models the intelligence community and law enforcement are already using to collect digital evidence from underground criminal forums, Telegram channels and other spaces.
- CEO Chase Reid told Axios that the agents, all of which are overseen by a human, act in the same ways as FBI analysts and undercover spies infiltrating Telegram channels and dark web forums.
- Khosla Ventures and XYZ Venture Capital led the round, and 2048 Ventures, BoxGroup, Liquid2, Alumni Ventures and others also participated, according to a news release.
- "It's not just passively collecting," Reid said. "Our agents are capable of actively engaging and doing cyber effects within these online ecosystems."
Zoom in: Agencies have been experimenting with Aslan's products mostly in short stints as they work out questions like how easily they can add guardrails to the agents and what data collection and storage look like, Reid said.
- The FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and other agencies have worked with Aslan on a mix of investigations, he added.
- "We're not trying to replace any human," he said. "This is just scaling existing human judgment beyond what a hiring office can do."
The intrigue: Aslan has already been used by customers to map out a live smuggling network on the U.S.-Mexico border, uncover a cyber-fraud marketplace that was evading sanctions, and surface technology transfer networks that allowed the Chinese government to access U.S. AI infrastructure.
- The company has also uncovered a coordinated Chinese recruitment effort targeting U.S. professionals in the defense industry, according to a company news release.
- In one case, Reid said, the agents ran autonomously for 21 days and two of them were able to "infiltrate the small, small slice of Telegram where six people were coordinating smuggling" and pull information about who the coordinators were and when the border-crossing would be happening.
Yes, but: Reid drew a red line at using the products for any domestic operations that would target or surveil Americans, and the startup is currently focused just on the U.S. market for now.
The big picture: Aslan is entering the market as the Trump administration lays the groundwork to allow private companies to carry out their own cyber disruptions, including takedowns and attacks.
- Reid said he sees much of Aslan's work being "applicable" to that program.
- "We want to go after these transnational criminal organizations and syndicates that, by and large, are cyber enabled and living online," he said. "Aslan is really the only thing that can scale to [criminals'] scale, and that's where we want to go."
Between the lines: Aslan plans to use the new funding to expand its technical team, including forward-deployed engineers who can be deployed to work on-site with law enforcement and agencies on specific missions, Reid said.
What to watch: By the end of October, Reid believes, the company will nearly double its headcount from the 10 employees it currently has.
Go deeper: Trump administration drops first cybersecurity strategy of second term
