For cybersecurity companies, identifying a new attack technique is only the beginning. The harder challenge can be turning research into a practical security capability before the underlying threat evolves again. Upwind is addressing that challenge through the acquisition of AI security startup Aegis and the creation of Upwind AI Security Labs, as first reported by Axios.
The new initiative brings Aegis co-founders Omri Limor and Saar Ankonina into Upwind to lead a research and engineering operation focused on AI security. The labs will work across scanning, attack detection and other capabilities designed to address security risks created by AI tools and frontier models.
Upwind says the initiative will combine Aegis’s technology and development work with its existing runtime platform, creating a path for emerging AI security research to move into enterprise-grade capabilities.
From Discovery to Deployment
The speed of AI development is changing the timeline for cybersecurity research. Upwind says the new labs are designed around the need to identify emerging attack techniques and move quickly from those discoveries toward practical defenses.
That approach is reflected in the structure of the acquisition. Rather than bringing Aegis into Upwind solely as a technology asset, the company is building a larger research and engineering organization around the startup’s team. The labs currently include 12 developers and researchers from Aegis and Upwind, with plans to reach approximately 25 people within three months and potentially 35 as the initiative grows.
“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 Amiram Shachar, CEO and Co-Founder at Upwind. “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.”
Why Aegis Became Part of Upwind
Aegis began as an independent startup founded by Limor and Ankonina, two 8200 alumni who started their careers together in an intelligence unit focused on offensive cybersecurity. Their professional relationship continued through different roles, including a commander-subordinate relationship, before the two eventually became peers.
After leaving the unit, they created Aegis to address security challenges in AI infrastructure. Its work focused on sophisticated AI-generated attacks, including autonomous exploitation pipelines and large-scale credential harvesting that can reduce traditional skill gaps.
The relationship with Upwind initially centered on strategic partnership and investment. Aegis approached the company while developing its product, and the two teams subsequently worked together for several months before moving forward with the acquisition.
“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.”
Addressing AI Infrastructure
The labs will focus on security issues surrounding AI agents and the technologies that extend their functionality. Agents can interact with applications, access information and execute tasks, while skills and plugins introduce additional components that need to be secured.
Upwind also identified secret scanning as a critical area of work. The company pointed to cases involving compromised API keys and session tokens being harvested at scale and said the labs will focus on scanning secrets both in transit and at rest to prevent unauthorized access across cloud and AI environments.
For Aegis, the acquisition provides an opportunity to pursue that work within Upwind’s existing platform.
“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.”
Saar Ankonina said the integration will provide a direct route for the technology to scale. “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.”
A Dedicated AI Security Capability
The new labs give Upwind a dedicated organization for researching the security implications of rapidly evolving AI capabilities while connecting that research to the company’s existing platform.
“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.”
