F5 to acquire CalypsoAI for USD $180 million to boost AI security

F5 has announced its intent to acquire CalypsoAI, a company specialising in enterprise AI security, in a bid to strengthen AI inference security for large organisations.

CalypsoAI provides a platform that offers real-time threat defence, large-scale red teaming, and data security controls tailored for enterprises deploying generative and agentic AI. These features will be incorporated into the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), expanding F5's approach to securing AI applications and infrastructure.

Shifting threat landscape

Many organisations are integrating AI into their products and operations, creating what industry experts have described as a rapidly evolving technology stack. This new environment encompasses applications, agents, APIs, models, and data stores. The expansion has led to a new and dynamic attack surface, posing risks that traditional security tools are often ill-equipped to address.

François Locoh-Donou, President and Chief Executive of F5, said, "AI is redefining enterprise architecture – and the attack surface companies must defend. Traditional firewalls and point solutions can't keep up. The addition of CalypsoAI will give enterprises the confidence to innovate faster and better protect critical data as they rely on F5 to deliver and secure apps, APIs, and AI models across their environment."

The proliferation of so-called "shadow AI" – unauthorised or unmonitored AI use within organisations – coupled with evolving regulatory requirements, places additional pressure on security and compliance teams. F5 and CalypsoAI contend that companies increasingly need a purpose-built, model-agnostic approach to safeguard data and maintain centralised oversight of AI interactions.

Industry perspectives

The acquisition announcement references Gartner's Market Guide on AI Trust, Risk and Security Management (TRiSM), which highlights the importance of maintaining independence from single AI model or cloud providers. Gartner notes: "The AI TRiSM market is distinguished by its independence from frontier model provider solutions that also support trust risk and security management. Enterprises must retain independence from any single AI model or hosting provider to ensure scalability, flexibility, cost control and trust, as AI markets rapidly mature and change."

According to F5, CalypsoAI's adaptive AI security platform provides key protections, including adversarial threat protection, proactive red teaming, secure data capabilities, and unified visibility tools. The platform is said to guard against emerging threats such as prompt injection and jailbreak attacks. In addition, organisations can use the platform to run over 10,000 new attack simulations each month to understand their risk posture. Other tools include real-time detection and prevention of sensitive data leakage, policy violation monitoring, and features designed to comply with privacy regulations such as the EU AI Act and GDPR across different environments.

"Enterprises want to move fast with AI while reducing the risk of data leaks, unsafe outputs, or compliance failures," said Donnchadh Casey, Chief Executive of CalypsoAI. "Our customers rely on us to pressure test AI systems at scale, set inference layer guardrails that adapt as models change, and to gain visibility and auditability across their AI estate. F5 and CalypsoAI are more than the sum of their parts: high performance application delivery and AI security that enable businesses to deliver innovation faster without increasing risk."

Acquisition details

F5 will acquire all issued and outstanding shares of CalypsoAI, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, for USD $180 million in a transaction primarily financed with cash. The deal is expected to have a negligible effect on F5's revenue and operating results, according to details released by the parties involved.

The acquisition remains subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to complete in the fourth quarter of F5's 2025 fiscal year, ending 30 September 2025. Advisory support for the transaction includes Foros Advisors providing financial advice to F5, while Sullivan & Cromwell acted as F5's legal adviser. CalypsoAI was advised by Cooley.