Rilian, a startup building AI-native cybersecurity and defense systems, has secured $17.5 million in funding on the premise that national security organizations do not lack good technology. What they lack is the ability to use it effectively. The company was co-founded by Christian Schnedler, Nick Pompeo, and Dan Fischer, three practitioners with backgrounds in operational security and defense who set out to solve a problem they had lived firsthand.

The timing reflects a widening threat gap. According to CrowdStrike’s 2026 Global Threat Report, attacks by AI-enabled adversaries rose 89% year-over-year, with the average network breakout time falling to under 30 minutes. Security teams often still take hours to respond. Part of that lag comes from fragmentation: organizations run an average of 200+ security tools that are not connected to each other, and the expertise needed to operate them is already in short supply. When a skilled analyst leaves, that knowledge leaves too. Global cybersecurity spending has passed $200 billion a year, per Gartner, and the government and public-sector portion is expected to grow from roughly $45 to $50 billion in 2025 to more than $70 billion by 2030.

The seed and seed extension round was led by 8VC, First In, and Tamarack Global. Additional participants include 8090 Industries, Liquid 2 Ventures, Perot Jain, and Protego Ventures.

Why Defense Organizations Struggle to Use the Technology They Already Have

Recent conflicts have shown that cyber operations do not happen in isolation. Events like Operation Epic Fury and the war in Ukraine illustrate how modern hybrid warfare combines kinetic strikes with attacks on infrastructure, electronic warfare, and information operations. The result is a volume of data that human analysts cannot process alone. Good security tools exist. Getting them deployed quickly, reliably, and in compliance with government requirements is where the process breaks down.

The distance between innovation and operational use is especially wide in national security. Technologies developed in commercial centers can take years to reach the defense agencies that need them. Deploying them in restricted or remote environments takes even longer. Rilian’s argument is that agentic AI, meaning AI systems that can act autonomously across multiple tools and workflows without waiting for human instruction at every step, can meaningfully speed up that process.

“Rilian is redefining how sovereign organizations access and operationalize advanced cyber and defense capabilities. They sit at the intersection of AI, national security, and critical infrastructure; exactly where the stakes are highest and the legacy playbook is failing. We believe Rilian’s platform approach, and its ability to work alongside the best innovators in the ecosystem, positions the company to become foundational infrastructure for modern sovereign defense.”

Alex Moore, Partner at 8VC

How Rilian Plans to Use the Funding

The capital will go toward expansion in the United States, Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and other Allied nations. Planned spending covers go-to-market efforts, engineering hires, and further research and development in agentic AI for both defense and commercial security markets.

The company already has at least one major government contract in place. In July 2025, Rilian signed an agreement with the UAE Cybersecurity Council to help secure national critical infrastructure. Under that contract, the UAE’s National Security Operations Center is deploying Rilian’s platform to integrate and automate cybersecurity operations across operational technology environments, which refers to the computer systems that control physical infrastructure such as power grids and water systems.

Rilian has also formed partnerships with SentinelOne, Censys, and SimSpace, along with hyperscalers and large language model developers. Rather than building every capability itself, the company integrates tools from these partners into a unified system that security teams can operate from a single interface.

“For many national security organizations, the challenge of executing their mission is not a lack of budget or technology; it is the effective utilization of technical capabilities with limited skilled manpower. Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, Northern Virginia, and other innovation hubs regularly produce impactful capabilities. Unfortunately, these take years to scale within governments at home, let alone deploying to global conflict zones where defenders need them most. Rilian was built to turn security into an execution success, not a procurement and human staffing problem.”

Christian Schnedler, CEO and Co-Founder of Rilian

What Rilian Builds and How Its Platform Works

The three co-founders have described their background as people who wrote the playbooks, ran the investigations, and watched hard-won knowledge disappear each time a senior analyst moved on. Their main product, Caspian, is a security orchestration platform that connects an organization’s existing tools through a single command layer. Pre-trained AI agents handle routine tasks, learn from adversary patterns, and retain institutional knowledge so it does not walk out the door with the next departing employee.

Caspian is designed to run in places where standard commercial products typically cannot. These include air-gapped networks, meaning systems with no internet connection, as well as sovereign cloud environments, on-premise infrastructure, and settings with strict compliance requirements. A companion product called DawnTreader manages the deployment and compliance process, getting Caspian and third-party tools into secured environments in days rather than months. A third component, the Armory, is a curated library of vetted security technologies across eight capability domains that come pre-integrated and ready to use.

The company positions itself between large legacy systems integrators, which it says are too slow and too reliant on service contracts, and narrower point solutions that lack the ability to deploy in sovereign or restricted environments.

The Investors Behind the Round

The $17.5 million covers Rilian’s seed and seed extension financing. 8VC, First In, and Tamarack Global led the round, with 8090 Industries, Liquid 2 Ventures, Perot Jain, and Protego Ventures also participating. The group includes defense technology specialists alongside venture firms with national security focus.

“Rilian has identified and is executing on one of the most critical unsolved problems in national security: the gap between the world’s best cyber and defense technologies and the governments and enterprises that need them. Caspian isn’t just a product. It’s tomorrow’s infrastructure. Infrastructure that gets smarter with every deployment is exactly the kind of compounding, category-defining advantage that transforms how an industry operates.”

Renny McPherson, Managing Partner at First In

Tamarack Global’s managing partner pointed to the team’s operational experience as a key factor, specifically their understanding of how programs get deployed in restricted and contested environments.

“Agentic AI will define the next generation of mission systems. Rilian is building the connective tissue that enables governments to integrate advanced cyber and defense technologies into real operations at national scale. The team’s deep understanding of how programs are actually fielded — across air-gapped and contested environments — is exactly what is needed to turn AI from slideware into capabilities that protect lives.”

John McCormick, Founder and Managing Partner at Tamarack Global

Origianl Creator: Ekaterina Pisareva
Original Link: https://justainews.com/companies/funding-news/rilian-gets-17-5m-to-deploy-ai-in-defense-security/
Originally Posted: Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:44:29 +0000