Rilian secures $17.5 million to advance agentic AI for sovereign defense.

      The startup from McLean, Virginia, Rilian, has developed the Caspian platform, which acts as a command layer over existing security frameworks, deploying pre-trained AI agents in air-gapped and compliance-restricted settings. One of the co-founders is Nick Pompeo, the son of former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

      Rilian has successfully secured $17.5 million in seed and seed extension funding for its integration of agentic AI systems aimed at defense and national security clients. This funding round was led by 8VC, First In, and Tamarack Global, with contributions from 8090 Industries, Liquid 2 Ventures, Perot Jain, and Protego Ventures. The raised capital will support market expansion in the US and Gulf Cooperation Council regions, hiring in engineering, and research and development for AI-driven cyber and defense solutions tailored for governments and critical infrastructure operators.

      Caspian is Rilian’s flagship product, an AI-centric security orchestration platform that serves as a command layer for an organization’s entire security infrastructure. Instead of depending on human analysts to oversee numerous disparate tools, Caspian utilizes pre-trained AI agents to independently automate threat detection, responses, and targeting.

      The platform is specifically tailored for environments where commercial security tools face challenges, such as air-gapped networks, sovereign cloud deployments, on-premise infrastructure, and government systems bound by compliance regulations. Rilian claims that Caspian can implement capability updates within days rather than weeks and is designed to harness the institutional knowledge of human security specialists to streamline onboarding processes.

      Rilian addresses a structural issue. While defense ministries and national security agencies have ample access to advanced cybersecurity technologies produced by companies in Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, and Northern Virginia, the real challenge lies in deploying these capabilities for large-scale operations in environments that are intentionally isolated from the internet, governed by strict procurement regulations, and managed by limited personnel with security clearances. CEO and co-founder Christian Schnedler described this issue as one of procurement and manpower disguised as a technological problem.

      “Rilian was created to transform security into a successful execution rather than a procurement and staffing challenge,” he stated.

      The investor group underscores the geopolitical scope of Rilian’s ambitions. 8VC, based in San Francisco and co-founded by Joe Lonsdale, boasts a portfolio that includes companies like Palantir and Anduril. First In invests in Anduril, the defense technology firm established by Palmer Luckey. Tamarack Global concentrates on defense and national security investments. Protego Ventures, an Israeli defense-tech fund introduced in 2024 by Lital Leshem and Lee Moser, has raised $70 million to support defense startups; Leshem is also a co-founder of Carbyne, the emergency response software acquired by Axon for $625 million earlier this year.

      The collaboration of US and Israeli defense-tech investors along with Gulf-focused capital indicates that Rilian is strategically positioning itself within the US-Israel-GCC defense technology nexus that has gained significance following the Abraham Accords.

      Christian Schnedler serves as CEO, while Dan Fischer and Nick Pompeo are co-founders. Nick Pompeo, the son of Mike Pompeo, who was the former Director of the CIA and US Secretary of State during Donald Trump’s initial term, brings relevant connections to US national security and defense procurement circles, which are vital to the company's goal of expediting government adoption of defense technologies.

      Rilian has already secured a notable publicly disclosed customer. In July 2025, it entered into a contract with the UAE Cybersecurity Council, the national cybersecurity authority of the UAE, to implement Caspian throughout the UAE's National Security Operations Centre (NSOC) for the protection of critical infrastructure, including operational technology (OT) environments. This contract is noted as the platform’s first deployment on a national scale. Additionally, the company has forged partnerships with SentinelOne, Censys, and SimSpace as technology providers contributing to the Caspian ecosystem.

      The market context highlighted in the press release states that global cybersecurity and risk management expenditures exceed $200 billion annually, according to Gartner, and that the government and public sector segment is projected to grow from $45-50 billion in 2025 to over $70 billion by 2030, framing the addressable market although it should be interpreted as the firm’s market narrative rather than independent verification.