Fiddler AI vs Robust Intelligence

Fiddler AI is an AI observability and security platform founded in 2018 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, by Krishna Gade, Amit Paka, and Manoj Cheenath. Fiddler focuses on production monitoring — drift, performance, fairness, explainability — and has extended into LLM observability and security for compound and agentic AI systems. Fiddler raised a $30M Series C in January 2026, bringing total funding to $100M.

Robust Intelligence was a San Francisco-based AI security company co-founded in 2019 by Harvard computer science professor Yaron Singer and Kojin Oshiba. The company pioneered the concept of an 'AI Firewall' — a purpose-built platform that validates, stress-tests, and protects AI models from development through production. Key capabilities included algorithmic red teaming, automated model assessment, and proactive AI risk mitigation aligned to OWASP and MITRE ATLAS standards. Robust Intelligence was acquired by Cisco in October 2024 for a reported $400M and has been foundational to the development of Cisco AI Defense and Cisco Foundation AI. Its technology is now integrated into the Cisco Security Cloud, providing threat protection against prompt injection, data poisoning, jailbreaking, and unintentional model outcomes. The company raised $44M prior to acquisition across three rounds.