By PYMNTS | October 14, 2026
OpenAI is in preliminary discussions to acquire cybersecurity company Trail of Bits, The Information reported Tuesday (Oct. 13), citing unnamed sources.
The size of the potential deal was unclear, although OpenAI has in some cases paid hundreds of millions of dollars in stock to pick up small startups, the report said. Trail of Bits’ staff could help OpenAI as it races with rival Anthropic to develop artificial intelligence designed to identify software vulnerabilities.
Founded in 2012, Trail of Bits offers security research and tools and helps maintain open-source projects. It has a team of more than 40 workers and a history with OpenAI, according to the report. The startup in June collaborated with the ChatGPT maker on a software-patching project, Patch the Planet.
Staff from Trail of Bits work on open-source projects, like the Python programming language, to uncover, review and repair bugs, with assistance from OpenAI Codex tools, including models designed for cybersecurity, the report said.
We’d love to be your preferred source for news.
Please add us to your preferred sources list so our news, data and interviews show up in your feed. Thanks!
“We had a lot of existing relationships in the open-source community and have earned their trust over more than a decade of work,” said Trail of Bits CEO Dan Guido in a promotional video for Patch the Planet, per the report. “Codex enabled our team to ship things in a day that would have otherwise taken us weeks of time.”
OpenAI’s apparent acquisition efforts come amid rising interest in strengthening AI-related cybersecurity, following a series of incidents in which AI agents hacked third-party websites.
More than 400 scientists have signed an open letter advocating for more AI cybersecurity measures, PYMNTS reported Tuesday.
The scientists recommend that organizations involved with cyber-capable AI models adopt high-assurance containment systems and work with governments and experts in the fields of AI and cybersecurity to establish an international body to standardize best practices for alignment and containment approaches that allow for internet connectivity, according to the report. They also said companies need to report security incidents involving containment failure to that international body before eventually making them public.
Among the signers of the open letter is Yoshua Bengio, full professor at Université de Montréal, founder and scientific advisor at AI research institute Mila, and president and scientific director of nonprofit startup LawZero.
PYMNTS reported on the unveiling of LawZero in June 2025. The AI safety research organization works to prevent the technology from inflicting existential harm on humanity.
For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI newsletter.