F5 expands further into AI security with SurePath AI acquisition

F5’s acquisition this week of SurePath AI, a startup that detects artificial intelligence on corporate networks, is part of a broader effort by the Seattle company to cement itself in the booming market for securing AI for businesses.

“The more an enterprise adopts AI, the less visibility it has into what AI is operating in the organization,” said François Locoh-Donou, F5’s chairman, president and CEO, in an interview for this weekend’s GeekWire Podcast, conducted Thursday at the company’s downtown Seattle headquarters.

Denver-based SurePath, founded in 2023 and led by co-founder Casey Bleeker as CEO, had about 19 employees and had raised roughly $6 million in venture funding, according to PitchBook. Financial terms of F5’s acquisition weren’t disclosed.

SurePath monitors a company’s network to identify which AI tools and agents employees are using, including ones the company doesn’t know about, and tracks what they do.

F5 is incorporating SurePath into its broader AI security platform, announced this week, designed to discover the AI models and agents running inside a company, test them for vulnerabilities, and apply guardrails to keep them in check.

Locoh-Donou said customers have been forced to cobble that together from separate products. “Having four, five, six different tools to discover, test and secure your AI is a nightmare,” he said.

Kunal Anand, F5’s chief product officer, compared the problem to an earlier era, when employees adopted cloud software faster than their IT departments could track it. The big difference is that the AI version is moving faster and carries higher stakes.

“Shadow AI is shadow SaaS with a faster clock and a larger blast radius,” he wrote in a blog post.

F5, founded in Seattle in 1996, makes technology for securing and deploying applications across multiple platforms. The publicly traded company reported $3.1 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year and marked its 30th anniversary in May.

The SurePath deal is the latest in a string of acquisitions for the company, including its purchase last fall of CalypsoAI, now offered as F5 AI Red Team and F5 AI Guardrails.

Locoh-Donou said the company weighs three things in each acquisition: whether it can build the technology itself fast enough, whether the deal genuinely serves customers, and, above all, whether the team will fit F5’s culture.

“We have encountered companies in the industry that had great technology and brilliant people, but it was very clear to us that they would never be a great fit,” he said. “And so we walked away.”

Locoh-Donou discussed the acquisition, F5’s evolution, the rise of AI, the World Cup in Seattle and other topics in the GeekWire Podcast conversation. Look for the episode this weekend, and subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.