Rilian Raises $17.5M in Seed Funding Led by 8VC

The company plans to use the funds to expand in the U.S., GCC countries, and other allied markets, while growing its go-to-market efforts, hiring engineering talent, and advancing R&D in AI-powered cybersecurity and defense solutions for both commercial and large-scale government use.

Rilian built its flagship platform Caspian, to bring together advanced cyber and defense tools into one system. It provides a unified control layer that helps organizations manage security tools, and automate operations more efficiently.

The AI powered platform lets governments, businesses, and critical infrastructure operators quickly deploy and automate security across cloud, on premise and secure environments. Its pre-trained AI agents boost productivity by handling routine tasks, learning from threats, and helping teams adapt faster while preserving knowledge and simplifying training for new staff.

Rilians progress highlights the urgent need for its solution. In July 2025 it signed a major contract with the UAE Cybersecurity Council to help protect the countrys critical infrastructure. As part of the deal the UAEs National Security Operations Center is using the Caspian platform to manage and automate cybersecurity across operational systems.

The system uses AI agents to assess risks and respond to threats automatically at a national level, working with advanced technologies from partners in the UAE, the U.S., and other allied countries.

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“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,” said Christian Schnedler, CEO and Co-Founder of Rilian. “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.”

Schnedler continued, “This funding accelerates our mission to ensure that the U.S. government, its Allies, and critical infrastructure providers globally can access and operationalize the most advanced security capabilities through the power of agentic AI – with the speed, trust, and compliance their missions demand.”

“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,” said Alex Moore, Partner at 8VC.

"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,” said Renny McPherson, Managing Partner at First In.

“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 a 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,” said John McCormick, Founder and Managing Partner at Tamarack Global.

About Rilian Technologies

Founded in 2024, by Christian Schnedler, Nick Pompeo and Dan Fischer, Rilian is a security platform built for the AI era. Its Caspian platform gives teams a single control layer across all their tools, using pre-trained AI agents to boost productivity, capture knowledge, and deploy quickly in secure and restricted environments.

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