Check Point acquires Lakera to create AI security centre in Zurich
Check Point has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Lakera, an AI-native security company with offices in Zurich and San Francisco, in a move designed to establish a comprehensive end-to-end AI security stack for enterprise customers worldwide.
The acquisition is set to make Zurich the new Global Centre of Excellence for AI Security for Check Point, a step that the company says will enhance research and development efforts in AI security on a global scale. The new centre will focus on accelerating advancements and integration across Check Point's Infinity Platform.
AI expansion and new risks
Artificial intelligence is being adopted at a rapid pace across multiple sectors, with large language models, generative AI, and autonomous agents increasingly forming core parts of business operations. This expanded use of AI technologies is presenting new security considerations for enterprises, including increased risks related to data exposure, model manipulation, and vulnerabilities arising from multi-agent collaboration and decision-making processes.
Addressing these risks, Nadav Zafrir, Chief Executive Officer at Check Point Software Technologies, explained,
"AI is transforming every business process, but it also introduces new attack surfaces. We chose Lakera because it brings AI-native security, superior precision, and speed at scale. Together we are setting the benchmark for how enterprises adopt and trust AI."
Check Point's existing solutions include GenAI Protect, SaaS and API security, advanced data loss prevention, and machine learning-driven defences for applications, cloud infrastructure, and endpoints. Through acquiring Lakera, the company intends to incorporate new capabilities, enabling protection throughout the full AI lifecycle - covering models, agents, and data.
Technology and capabilities
Lakera, founded by experts with backgrounds at Google and Meta, operates significant research and development facilities in Zurich and San Francisco. The firm's portfolio includes Lakera Red and Lakera Guard, which offer posture assessments before deployment and real-time runtime enforcement to safeguard large language models, AI agents, and multimodal workflows. Lakera's security platform combines runtime protection with ongoing adversarial testing, supported by Gandalf, a large-scale adversarial AI network that currently tracks more than 80 million adversarial patterns.
The company's technology delivers detection rates greater than 98 percent, maintains latency below 50 milliseconds, and records false positives under 0.5 percent. Its platform supports over 100 languages, enabling deployment by enterprise customers around the world. Lakera's platform is used by several Fortune 500 companies and leading technology firms, and the team's expertise is backed by 11 PhDs in artificial intelligence and related fields.
Key strengths highlighted by Lakera include its AI-native protection - from prompt injection and data leakage to model manipulation - proven performance at scale, and its adaptive intelligence, thanks to continuous input from its adversarial dataset and research team.
Company perspectives
David Haber, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Lakera, commented,
"Lakera was purpose-built for the AI era, with real-time runtime security and research at its core. Joining Check Point allows us to accelerate and scale our mission globally. Together we will protect LLMs, generative AI, and agents with the speed, accuracy, and guardrails enterprises need to embrace AI with confidence."
Check Point says the combination of Lakera's AI-specific security capabilities with its own Infinity architecture will give enterprises a full stack solution to protect advanced AI workloads at scale. This protection is designed to cover all phases, from development and deployment through to runtime, enabling organisations to manage adoption of AI-powered technologies while addressing regulatory compliance and cyber risk considerations.
Future direction
Upon closing, Lakera will serve as the foundation of Check Point's Global Centre of Excellence for AI Security, bringing together technical expertise and global resources to support the advancement of enterprise AI security standards. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025, subject to customary closing conditions.
