# Lakera
Lakera is a Swiss-American AI security company, founded in Zurich in 2021, best known for the Gandalf prompt-injection game and for Lakera Guard, a runtime guardrail product that screens large language model (LLM) traffic for attacks such as prompt injection and jailbreaks.[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16) On September 16, 2025, Check Point Software Technologies announced an agreement to acquire the company, which was expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025.[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16)
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2021, Zurich, by David Haber, Dr. Mateo Rojas-Carulla, and Dr. Matthias Kraft[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16) |
| Headquarters | Zurich and San Francisco[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16) |
| Founders' background | Described as former Google and Meta AI experts[2](https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rj5bc1vige) |
| Total disclosed funding | $30 million ($10M in 2023, $20M Series A in July 2024)[3](https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/lakera-which-protects-enterprises-from-llm-vulnerabilities-raises-20m/) |
| Employees at acquisition | About 70[2](https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rj5bc1vige) |
| Acquisition | Check Point agreement announced September 16, 2025; value undisclosed, estimated at about $300 million[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16) • [2](https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rj5bc1vige) |
| Main products | Lakera Guard (real-time enforcement), Lakera Red (pre-deployment red-teaming), Gandalf (research game and dataset)[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16) |
## Founding and founders
Lakera was founded in 2021 in Zurich by David Haber (chief executive), Dr. Mateo Rojas-Carulla, and Dr. Matthias Kraft.[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16) CTech described the founders as former Google and [Meta AI](https://www.edgepedia.org/meta-ai) experts and reported that the company operated R&D centers in Zurich and San Francisco with roughly 70 employees at the time of its acquisition.[2](https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rj5bc1vige) The company stayed quiet for its first two years and launched publicly on October 12, 2023, revealing a previously undisclosed $10 million funding round led by the Swiss venture firm Redalpine, with Fly Ventures, Inovia Capital, and several angel investors participating.[4](https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/12/lakera-launches-to-protect-large-language-models-from-malicious-prompts/)
## Gandalf: the jailbreak game
Gandalf is a web game that doubles as a data-collection instrument. Players try to trick an LLM into revealing a secret password using prompt injection, the family of attacks in which crafted text overrides a model's instructions; the game's defenses harden at each level, making the trick progressively harder.[3](https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/lakera-which-protects-enterprises-from-llm-vulnerabilities-raises-20m/) The game ran on OpenAI's GPT-3.5 alongside LLMs from Cohere and [Anthropic](https://www.edgepedia.org/anthropic).[4](https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/12/lakera-launches-to-protect-large-language-models-from-malicious-prompts/)
By launch in October 2023, CEO David Haber reported that Gandalf had recorded about 30 million interactions from 1 million users over the previous six months.[4](https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/12/lakera-launches-to-protect-large-language-models-from-malicious-prompts/) Those interactions fed a prompt injection taxonomy dividing attacks into roughly 10 categories, including direct attacks, jailbreaks, sidestepping, multi-prompt attacks, role-playing, model duping, obfuscation, and token smuggling, multi-language attacks, and accidental context leakage.[4](https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/12/lakera-launches-to-protect-large-language-models-from-malicious-prompts/) By September 2025, [Check Point](https://www.edgepedia.org/check-point)'s press release described Gandalf as holding more than 80 million adversarial patterns; the growth from roughly 30 million reflects two years of continued play and is a vendor-reported figure.[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16)
## Products: Guard and Red
Lakera's product line separates runtime defense from pre-deployment testing. **Lakera Guard** is the inline guardrail: it sits in front of an LLM application and screens prompts and responses in real time, protecting LLMs, AI agents, and multimodal workflows according to the acquisition announcement.[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16) **Lakera Red** is the pre-deployment counterpart, offering posture assessments and red-teaming of applications before they ship.[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16) The acquisition announcement described Lakera's platform as powered by Gandalf's 80 million-plus adversarial patterns and guided by a dedicated AI research team.[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16)
Mechanically, Guard is not a set of keyword rules. TechCrunch reported in 2024 that it is built on a database combining open-source datasets, in-house machine-learning research, and Gandalf game data, and that the taxonomy enabled detector models trained to catch prompt injections in real time. Haber described the approach as "AI-first, building our own models to detect malicious attacks such as prompt injections in real time." The product also ships dedicated content-moderation detectors for hate speech, sexual content, violence and profanities, and works with any major LLM, including OpenAI's GPT models, Google's Bard, Meta's Llama, and Anthropic's Claude.[3](https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/lakera-which-protects-enterprises-from-llm-vulnerabilities-raises-20m/)
On performance, the vendor reported at acquisition that Lakera delivers detection rates above 98 percent with sub-50ms latency and false positives below 0.5 percent.[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16) These are the company's own claims; no independent evaluation in the record confirms or contradicts them.
## Funding, governance and the Check Point acquisition
Lakera raised $10 million at its October 2023 launch (Redalpine, Fly Ventures, Inovia Capital, and angels) and a $20 million Series A in July 2024 led by Atomico, with participation from Dropbox's venture arm, Citi Ventures, and Redalpine, bringing total disclosed funding to $30 million.[4](https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/12/lakera-launches-to-protect-large-language-models-from-malicious-prompts/) • [3](https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/lakera-which-protects-enterprises-from-llm-vulnerabilities-raises-20m/) No source in the record states the company's valuation at any round.
On September 16, 2025, Check Point Software Technologies (NASDAQ: CHKP) announced an agreement to acquire Lakera, describing it as an AI-native security platform for agentic AI applications, and said the transaction was expected to close in Q4 2025 subject to customary conditions.[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16) The deal value was not officially disclosed; CTech estimated it at about $300 million.[2](https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rj5bc1vige) Upon closing, Lakera was to form the foundation of Check Point's Global Center of Excellence for AI Security within the Check Point Infinity Platform.[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16)
## Customers and adoption
At launch in October 2023, Cohere was a confirmed paying customer, alongside what [TechCrunch](https://www.edgepedia.org/techcrunch) described as a leading enterprise cloud platform and one of the world's largest cloud storage services, unnamed.[4](https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/12/lakera-launches-to-protect-large-language-models-from-malicious-prompts/) In July 2024, TechCrunch reported customers including Cohere and the AI startup Respell.[3](https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/lakera-which-protects-enterprises-from-llm-vulnerabilities-raises-20m/) CTech reported that Gandalf is used as a commercial service for [Fortune 500](https://www.edgepedia.org/fortune-500) clients.[2](https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rj5bc1vige) The funding aggregator Indexed.vc additionally lists Dropbox, Pearson, and [Hinge Health](https://www.edgepedia.org/hinge-health) as customers, but this is unverified beyond that source.[5](https://indexed.vc/companies/lakera)
## What changed, 2024 to 2026
Three developments define the period. First, the July 2024 Series A moved the company from stealth-stage to scale-up, with named enterprise investors (Atomico, Citi Ventures, Dropbox Ventures), and a stated focus on in-house detection models.[3](https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/lakera-which-protects-enterprises-from-llm-vulnerabilities-raises-20m/) Second, the September 2025 acquisition by Check Point folded an independent startup of about 70 people into an established cybersecurity vendor, with Lakera repositioned as the anchor of a new AI security center of excellence.[1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16) • [2](https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rj5bc1vige) Third, the Gandalf dataset grew from roughly 30 million interactions at launch to a vendor-reported 80 million-plus adversarial patterns by acquisition, and the company's positioning shifted toward securing agentic AI, where models take actions rather than only answering.[4](https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/12/lakera-launches-to-protect-large-language-models-from-malicious-prompts/) • [1](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16)
## References
1. [Check Point Acquires Lakera to Deliver End-to-End AI Security for Enterprises (press release via Nasdaq/GlobeNewswire, September 16, 2025)](https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/check-point-acquires-lakera-deliver-end-end-ai-security-enterprises-2025-09-16)
2. [Check Point acquires Lakera in $300 million deal to expand AI security (Calcalist/CTech, September 2025)](https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rj5bc1vige)
3. [Lakera, which protects enterprises from LLM vulnerabilities, raises $20M (TechCrunch, July 24, 2024)](https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/lakera-which-protects-enterprises-from-llm-vulnerabilities-raises-20m/)
4. [Lakera launches to protect large language models from malicious prompts (TechCrunch, October 12, 2023)](https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/12/lakera-launches-to-protect-large-language-models-from-malicious-prompts/)
5. [Lakera Funding: $30.0M Raised, Investors & History (Indexed.vc)](https://indexed.vc/companies/lakera)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Technology and the built world › Computing and digital systems › Modern AI: foundation models, generative AI, and the AI industry › AI companies, people, and products › AI chips, compute, and infrastructure companies*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 19, 2026 · Edited: Sep 19, 2026; Oct 11, 2026 · Last review: Sep 19, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license