The McLean, Virginia startup’s Caspian platform sits as a command layer above existing security stacks, deploying pre-trained AI agents into air-gapped and compliance-restricted environments. One of its co-founders is Nick Pompeo, son of former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Rilian, a McLean, Virginia-based startup building agentic AI systems integration for defence and national security customers, has raised $17.5 million in seed and seed extension funding.
The round was led by 8VC, First In, and Tamarack Global, with participation from 8090 Industries, Liquid 2 Ventures, Perot Jain, and Protego Ventures. Funds will go towards go-to-market expansion across the US and Gulf Cooperation Council countries, engineering hiring, and R&D in AI-powered cyber and defence solutions for governments and critical infrastructure operators.
The company’s core product is Caspian, an AI-native security orchestration platform that functions as a command layer across an organisation’s entire security stack.
Rather than requiring human analysts to monitor dozens of disconnected tools, Caspian deploys pre-trained AI agents that automate threat detection, countermeasures, and targeting autonomously.
The platform is designed specifically for the environments that commercial security tools struggle with: air-gapped networks, sovereign cloud deployments, on-premise infrastructure, and compliance-constrained government systems.
Rilian says Caspian can push through capability updates in days rather than weeks, and is built to capture the institutional knowledge of human security experts to accelerate onboarding.
The problem Rilian is addressing is structural. Defence ministries and national security agencies have no shortage of access to advanced cybersecurity technology, produced in volume by companies in Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, and Northern Virginia.
The problem is deployment: translating those capabilities into operational use at national scale, in environments that are deliberately isolated from internet connectivity, subject to strict procurement rules, and staffed by limited numbers of cleared personnel.
CEO and co-founder Christian Schnedler described it as a procurement and manpower problem masquerading as a technology one.
“Rilian was built to turn security into an execution success, not a procurement and human staffing problem,” he said.
The investor syndicate reflects the geopolitical reach of the ambition. 8VC is the San Francisco-based fund co-founded by Joe Lonsdale, with a portfolio that includes Palantir and Anduril. First In is an investor in Anduril, the US defence technology company founded by Palmer Luckey.
Tamarack Global focuses on defence and national security. Protego Ventures is an Israeli defence-tech fund founded in 2024 by Lital Leshem and Lee Moser, which has raised $70 million to invest in defence startups; Leshem is also a co-founder of Carbyne, the emergency response software company sold to Axon for $625 million earlier this year.
The combination of US and Israeli defence-tech investors alongside Gulf-focused capital signals that Rilian is explicitly targeting the US-Israel-GCC defence technology triangle that has grown in prominence since the Abraham Accords.
Christian Schnedler is CEO. Dan Fischer is a co-founder. The third co-founder is Nick Pompeo, son of Mike Pompeo, the former Director of the CIA and US Secretary of State during Donald Trump’s first term.
Nick Pompeo’s connections to US national security and defence procurement circles are material context for a company whose commercial proposition is precisely about accelerating government adoption of defence technology.
Rilian already has one significant publicly disclosed customer. In July 2025 it signed a contract with the UAE Cybersecurity Council, the country’s national cybersecurity authority, to deploy Caspian across the UAE’s National Security Operations Centre (NSOC) for critical infrastructure protection, including operational technology (OT) environments.
The contract is described as the platform’s first nation-scale implementation. The company has also established partnerships with SentinelOne, Censys, and SimSpace as technology providers feeding into the Caspian ecosystem.
The market context cited in the press release, global cybersecurity and risk management spending above $200 billion annually, per Gartner, and the government, public sector segment growing from $45-50 billion in 2025 to over $70 billion by 2030, provides the addressable market framing, though it should be read as the company’s own market narrative rather than independent validation.
