CalypsoAI vs Cisco AI Defense

CalypsoAI was an AI security company founded in the US in 2018 by Neil Serebryany, its first CEO; it describes itself as founded in Silicon Valley, and its early press releases carry Washington datelines. It began with software for testing, validating and monitoring AI and machine learning models for national security, finance and other regulated customers, and moved to securing generative AI with CalypsoAI Moderator in 2023. Donnchadh Casey became CEO in August 2024. In October 2024 CalypsoAI named Dublin its global co-headquarters, alongside a US headquarters in New York; IDA Ireland says the CEO, the CTO and most of its R&D were based in Dublin. Paladin Capital Group led its $13 million Series A (July 2020) and a $23 million Series A-1 (June 2023), and F5 says it raised more than $40 million in venture funding. Investors also included Lockheed Martin Ventures and Hakluyt Capital. F5 announced on September 11, 2025 that it would acquire CalypsoAI for $180 million in purchase consideration, mostly cash. F5's 10-Q says the deal closed on September 26, 2025 and records $145.2 million in cash consideration. CalypsoAI is no longer sold separately: calypsoai.com now redirects to F5's AI Guardrails page. F5 introduced F5 AI Guardrails and F5 AI Red Team when it announced the close, and made both generally available in January 2026. Buyers should evaluate those products. **What it sold** By 2025 CalypsoAI sold an inference security platform with two main products. Inference Defend checked prompts and responses in real time to block prompt injection, jailbreaks and sensitive data leakage, using custom scanners that could be versioned, tested and enforced per project. Inference Red-Team ran automated and agent-driven multi-turn attacks, drawing on more than 10,000 new attack prompts a month, and produced a risk score. The platform logged AI interactions for audit, sent logs to Splunk, and ran as SaaS, on premises or hybrid. In August 2025 CalypsoAI said an on-premises version of Red-Team, for organizations with strict data residency or air-gapped requirements, would soon be available in early access. **Frameworks** In August 2025 CalypsoAI added an EU AI Act scanner package to Inference Defend, covering four Article 5 prohibited-practice categories: manipulation, social scoring, biometric data harvesting and surveillance. F5's deal announcement said its governance features help customers meet GDPR and EU AI Act requirements. We found no CalypsoAI mapping to the NIST AI RMF or ISO 42001.

Cisco AI Defense is Cisco's security product for enterprise AI applications, models and agents. Cisco unveiled it on January 15, 2025 and said it would be available that March. It is built on Robust Intelligence, the AI security startup Cisco announced it would acquire on August 26, 2024 and finished acquiring on September 24, 2024; Dark Reading called Robust Intelligence the core component of AI Defense. The product is sold by Cisco Systems, Inc., which was incorporated in 1984 and is based in San Jose; this profile lists Cisco's founding year and headquarters, as the directory does for other big-company products. Cisco's May 2026 data sheet splits the product into four parts. AI Cloud Visibility discovers AI models, applications, connected data sources, MCP servers and agents, including assets in Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex and Azure AI Foundry. AI Supply Chain Risk Management scans model files, repositories and MCP servers and tools, and gives each asset a risk score. AI Model and Application Validation runs algorithmic red teaming with more than 200 attack techniques and threat subcategories. AI Runtime Protection applies safety, security and privacy guardrails, enforces MCP policies at runtime and protects agent behavior. Runtime checks can run at the network level through Cisco Multicloud Defense, through a gateway, or through an Inspection API. Hybrid deployments (AWS EKS, Azure AKS, GCP and on-premises AI PODs on OpenShift) keep sensitive data in the customer's environment. A separate AI Access module, for employee use of third-party AI apps, comes through Cisco Secure Access and needs its Advantage package. **Agent and MCP security** In February 2026 Cisco added an AI bill of materials, an MCP Catalog, multi-turn red teaming of models and agents, real-time agentic guardrails and an integration with NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails; the release gave no availability dates. In March 2026 it launched AI Defense: Explorer Edition, a self-service red-teaming tool Cisco offers at no upfront cost, and announced an Agent Runtime SDK for Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, Google Vertex Agent Builder, Azure AI Foundry and LangChain, plus DefenseClaw, an open-source agent security framework. **Frameworks** Cisco says AI Defense has mapped to NIST, OWASP and MITRE frameworks since launch. Its data sheet names the NIST AI RMF, MITRE ATLAS and the OWASP Top 10 for LLMs, and red-team reports also map to Cisco's own Integrated AI Security and Safety Framework. We found no documented support for the EU AI Act or ISO 42001. **Who it's for** Large enterprises that already use Cisco security products (Secure Access, Multicloud Defense, Splunk) and want AI discovery, red teaming and runtime guardrails from one vendor. Cisco doesn't publish prices.