# Lakera AI

**Source:** https://geo.sig.ai/brands/lakera-ai  
**Vertical:** Cybersecurity  
**Subcategory:** LLM Security  
**Tier:** Emerging  
**Website:** lakera.ai  
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-14

## Summary

Real-time LLM security; protects AI apps against prompt injection, jailbreaks, and data leakage; API-integrated guardrails deployable without code changes; founded in Zurich, Switzerland.

## Company Overview

Lakera AI is an AI security company founded in 2021 and headquartered in Zurich, focused on protecting large language model applications from adversarial inputs and unsafe outputs. The company's flagship product, Lakera Guard, acts as a real-time security layer between user inputs and LLM APIs, detecting and blocking prompt injection attacks, jailbreak attempts, toxic content, and sensitive data exposure. As enterprises race to deploy LLM-powered products including chatbots, copilots, and autonomous agents, Lakera has emerged as a critical security infrastructure provider for AI application teams. The platform integrates as a lightweight API call and supports major LLM providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, and open-source models. Lakera also created Gandalf, a widely shared gamified prompt injection challenge used to demonstrate LLM vulnerabilities. The company serves enterprises in financial services, healthcare, and technology building production LLM applications that require robust safety and security guardrails.

## Frequently Asked Questions

### What is Lakera AI?
Lakera AI provides real-time security for LLM-powered applications, detecting and blocking prompt injection attacks, jailbreak attempts, and sensitive data leakage before they reach or exit the model.

### What is Lakera Guard?
Lakera Guard is a real-time API security layer that sits between user inputs and LLM APIs, scanning content for adversarial attacks, policy violations, and unsafe outputs to protect production AI applications.

### What is Gandalf by Lakera?
Gandalf is a gamified prompt injection challenge created by Lakera that asks users to extract a secret password from an AI, demonstrating real-world LLM vulnerabilities and raising awareness about AI security risks.

### How much has Lakera AI raised?
Lakera AI raised approximately $20M in Series A funding from investors including Dropbox Ventures and Redalpine. The company is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, and serves enterprises deploying LLM-powered applications where prompt injection and data leakage are primary security concerns.

### What is a prompt injection attack and why is it a critical LLM security risk?
Prompt injection is an attack where malicious instructions embedded in user inputs or retrieved documents override an LLM's original system prompt, causing the model to perform unintended actions — leaking confidential data, bypassing safety guardrails, or executing unauthorized operations in agentic systems. As LLMs gain tool-calling capabilities, prompt injection becomes capable of triggering real-world actions like sending emails, modifying databases, or accessing restricted APIs.

### How does Lakera Guard protect RAG applications?
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) systems retrieve documents that are then included in LLM context, creating an indirect prompt injection attack surface where malicious content in retrieved documents can override system instructions. Lakera Guard scans retrieved content before it is injected into prompts, detecting and sanitizing indirect injection attempts that would otherwise execute with the authority of the system prompt.

### How does Lakera integrate with LLM APIs?
Lakera Guard operates as an API proxy or SDK integration that sits between application code and LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure OpenAI). Input scanning happens before prompts reach the model; output scanning happens before model responses are returned to users. Integration requires minimal code changes — typically wrapping existing API calls with Lakera's client library.

### What is Lakera's Gandalf challenge and how does it serve as a marketing and research tool?
Gandalf is Lakera's gamified prompt injection challenge where users attempt to extract a secret password from an AI through prompt manipulation. With millions of players, Gandalf has generated one of the largest datasets of real-world prompt injection attempts, which Lakera uses to train and improve its detection models. The challenge simultaneously demonstrates LLM security risks to a broad technical audience and builds Lakera's brand as the authority on LLM security.

## Tags

ai-powered, cybersecurity, startup, b2b, saas, security

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*Data from geo.sig.ai Brand Intelligence Database. Updated 2026-04-14.*