Anaconda Adds EnkryptAI to Advance AI-Native Development

Hey everyone, we're back here with our coverage from Black Hat. I'm really glad to be back from the floor. I don't know if you were out on the floor, it's manic out.

It's chaos. Yeah. But we're here in our little video area to do our next video.

The gentleman on my immediate left needs no introduction. He's my friend David DeSanto. He's the CEO of Anaconda, and David has been on.

You keep acquiring companies like this, I'm going to have to charge you rent. He's always at the seat to my left, but David's been on a bunch as we've been telling the continuing story of Anaconda. Anaconda actually have an article coming out about the snake moving up their chain, and it really has been.

So David, welcome. Thank you. Congratulations, but we're going to jump more into it.

But first, let me introduce my guest to the far left. His name is Sahil Agarwal. ai.

That's correct. Yes? That's correct.

Yeah. All right. Sachin, welcome to TechstrongTV.

It's great to have you on here. Thank you. So, what have you been doing lately?

Figuring out how to expand faster. Uh-huh. That's- So big news today, though.

Broke today. ai has joined with Anaconda, and congratulations to you both. Thank you.

Yeah. I think it's a great thing. And David and I were talking a little off camera about our last interview which was, what was it?

A couple weeks ago? It was. Right?

And it was the Kilo acquisition, and we were talking about what else might be up your sleeve. Yeah. Now you've pulled another ace out here.

So, if it's okay with you, Sachin, I'm going to ask David to go first. Yeah. Tell us the strategy behind this.

This is now a team you're putting together. Tell us how this all fits in. Yeah.

So, when I joined Anaconda October of last year, after meeting with customers for a while, I realized that there was this gap in the market, which was to have a truly AI native development platform that could help close out gaps for companies. Because today, it's 80% of AI projects never make it to production. Nope.

And it's because of the security of it. It's the reproducibility of it. " And so when thinking about how we get there, we initially partnered with Sahil and the Encrypt team, and over our conversations about partnership, it really became clear to both Sahil and I that this could actually be a really good pairing.

And so when you now take a step back and look at Anaconda, when I first joined and we met, I think it was at re:Invent, we were a Python packaging company, and more importantly, a software supply chain company for organizations. And when bringing in the acquisitions this year, we were able to accelerate our roadmap. We had ambitious plans that were going to take two or three years to build, but now we'll actually, in September, when our platform goes GA, it will be all these things coming together and being able to allow someone to actually truly start building something they have in their mind and then get it into production, all within Anaconda.

I love it. So David, I just want to creep into your mind for a second. It's scary in there.

Yeah, it could be scary. Be warned. But I know you took over last October- Mm ...

so it's almost a year now. When did this whole vision kind of lay out for you? And then what was the process to find the right pieces?

Yeah. So for me, through the interview process with the board, I had started learning more and more about Anaconda. I was a customer two jobs ago and a contributor when it was still just an open source project.

And the idea to be able to take what is the trusted foundation for AI, almost every company that's at RSA or Black Hat, or who we met at re:Invent, are Anaconda customers. And to validate that idea, I spent, I think it was about three or four weeks after my first week or two of onboarding, out talking to customers. And by the time we got to the beginning of the year, it was clear what customers need and what they're struggling with, and it matched the original idea of where we could go.

And it wasn't just about finding the right pieces. What I would say was, it was finding organizations like Encrypt that had a very similar company culture, people who were customer obsessed. And looking at the technology, it's fantastic.

It absolutely blew me away last year. But it's also about the people. Right.

And it's not just Sahil, it's also his- Sahil ... co-founder, Prashanth. Mm-hmm.

Incredible. They've built an amazing team. And we, last night, celebrated, had dinner together, and everyone was smiling at the table.

Everyone's excited about what it could mean for customers. Now they don't just use Anaconda to build, they have a thesis to build and deploy, all using agents embedded into it, and now with the security guardrails needed to be able to trust it. First of all, Sahil, I have to apologize.

I called you Sachin. I have a friend, Sahil Agarwal, and you should be as successful as he is. I think he's had about three or four exits in the security space.

Awesome. The last one, I think he sold to Tenable, so I apologize. But let's hear a little bit about Encrypt Yeah.

So, we started almost four years ago, before ChatGPT was a thing, with the thesis that for enterprises to really adopt AI at scale, they'll still face a hurdle of whether you could trust a machine to give you the right answer. And I think people expect machines to be deterministic, whereas AI will never be deterministic. So, that was the thesis we started with.

And we were lucky to build an amazing team, find great partners, find amazing customers. And then ultimately, we want to work with people who are building agents and get into that ecosystem where we get access, a huge step function access to those developers. And I think that's how this came together from our perspective.

So let me kind of crawl in your mind for a second. Was this always part of the plan to find a partner or an acquirer who would bring this kind of scale and opportunity to you? I don't think as a founder, when you start a company, you think about these things.

It's about building the product, getting in front of customers, and ultimately having customers love your product and scale through that. At some point in time, we started realizing that my belief is security should not be something that's bolted on top of it. It should be something that's built into the agent or into the infrastructure from day zero.

And as that belief became stronger and stronger, we realized we needed a partner to go bigger and capture the market. So, that's how it really happened. And I'm super happy that- Understood.

Yeah. I will tell you, it took a little bit of wining and dining to get him excited about it. From the master winer and diner.

Yeah. Any place good, or? Well, it's all over the world.

Well, literally. Well, I guess we'd run into each other at events. Okay.

We were at RSA, New York. Mm-hmm. So, lots of places and lots of conversations.

No, but look, I founded four or five companies myself. You know the old saying, if you dress up a pig for market, you know what you have? A pig.

So no one goes into, I think, starting a company thinking, "Oh, I want to make this pretty for someone to buy us," right? Yeah. You go into it with a passion of solving a problem, of doing something meaningful, and then along the way, you realize it'd be easier or it'd be good to have help.

It'd be good to have more resources. I did it here at Textron. We're part of Futurum.

Because especially in changing eras and choppy waters, if you will, not necessarily bad, but change, and change is constant. Sometimes you want to have more resources. You want to have a bigger, better team.

I always say, "I don't want to be the smartest person at the table. I want to be with smart people," right? Exactly.

Who share a vision, and we go out and get it. And so again, congratulations to you on this. Thank you.

Just a couple bookkeeping questions. So is this a closed deal now, or you just announced it? Correct.

It closed yesterday. Okay. We were trying to align it with Black Hat so we could talk to you about it- I appreciate it ...

as the news broke. But yeah, yesterday, around lunchtime- You got it ... the press release went out.

Uh-huh. m. Eastern Time.

Yes. And then, we were on planes here- Oh, really? for the event as everything was breaking.

Yeah. I love it. What else?

So, are you done? What I will say is we have three amazing companies that have now joined us. Yes.

And we need to work on fully integrating that in. And that's a job. Yeah.

All kidding aside. Look, sometimes when you're going to make an omelet, if you don't take care, you wind up with just broken eggs. Mm-hmm.

And that's as important as getting the deal done, is the integration and that, especially times three. Yeah. No, and I'll tell you too, I believe there's two types of acquisitions.

There's opportunistic and there's strategic. Right. And for us, bringing in Sahil and team, it really accelerates all the things we wanted to work on around AI safety and security.

Yeah. And that was truly the last missing component within the platform. It's been an amazing experience getting to meet some amazing founders and help them help us accelerate our roadmap, get them exposed.

Incrypt probably now has a 40 to 50 times larger sales force to sell the product, right? That's a big change. And they're going to be able to help influence the company in ways that are unique to them to make sure we're delivering the best possible platform for our customers.

And so, what I would say is that all three were strategic. Strategic means that you're doing something for very specific reasons, not a fire sale. Right?

And so for us, it's now letting them become Anaconda, integrating into the platform. What I'll tell you is we get to talk in September because the platform goes GA- Oh, really? in September.

Yeah. And that'll bring in all of Outerbounds and Anaconda's platforms together, which actually is now currently in beta. Okay.

So anyone can just reach out to Anaconda and begin to play with it. And then, Kela is currently integrating as we speak, and we've already planned out what parts of Incrypt will be available in the platform at GA. But deliver a note, it'll still be sold as a standalone product.

Incrypt's customers are security teams. I was going to ask, yeah. Yeah.

Anacondas are data science and AI engineers, and so we want to expose all of Anaconda's customer base to good security guardrails and red teaming, but then also not limit- The security industry that is falling in love with the company. I love it. So it sounds like the entire team is joining in here.

Yeah. Number one. Number two, look, integrating product is one thing, right?

And it's more than integrating product. I think you said it. It's creating a whole platform.

Mm-hmm. Right? It's not like I had this platform, and I'm adding these things.

You're literally creating the platform. Integrating people, integrating culture, integrating tribal knowledge is yet a different aspect or facet of this. How are you guys tackling that?

Yeah, I'd like you to comment on it, too, but I think to build on something you said, for me, I've not done as many acquisitions as you have, but we're probably around 12 or 13 in my career, and the ones- That's enough. Yeah. Well, I've also been acquired a few times, so I've got to throw that in there, too.

Yeah, I've been on that side, too. But the thing that makes acquisitions successful is not the tech. The tech is always incredible.

Right. It's how do you find people who have a similar mindset, culture, way of working, and those acquisitions that are the most successful. And so for us, Encrypt has incredible technology, but it's really about Sahil, Prashant, the team.

It felt like as we talked, we were basically the same company already. And so for us, that's going to be a thing we're focused on here in the short term. Yes, we're going to train sales, get them out on the road talking about Encrypt.

Absolutely. Yes, we're going to have engineering doing the integrations for our launch in six and a half weeks. But what I'm going to be focused on is making sure everyone feels welcome.

And that's why it was important to have a big dinner for everyone that was here last night from Encrypt. I say there's probably 14 people at dinner. And so that, to me, that's going to be the focus, is how can I help them feel like they're already at home.

Excellent. And Sahil, what has been the feedback from your team? They've been super excited.

I think all of us have been R builders. Coming into a very engineering first company has been very exciting, and something that they've been asking a lot of questions to me about before yesterday, that I'm now pointing them to all the different people within Anaconda about how can we move faster- Right ... now that we've been here.

What are the other resources that are available to us? How do we accelerate our roadmap from Encrypt's perspective to go and serve more and more customers, faster and faster? Because ultimately, wherever anyone is, it's about how do you maximize your impact, and that's what everyone wants to do.

I love it. Guys, we're about out of time. David, first of all, I want to thank you for coming in here and talking to us.

Honestly, thank you for having us. It's always a pleasure, man. I enjoy it.

Thank you. Sahil, again, best of luck. Thank you.

There's the other story about boats, right? The best two days of owning a boat, the day you buy it and the day you sell it. But all kidding aside, this is the start of, hopefully...

What's the line from Casablanca? "This is the start of a beautiful relationship" or something like that. Absolutely.

And I hope it works out for all of you, and I'm looking forward to seeing what we see from Anaconda going forward. You good? Well, thank you.

All right. Hey, we're at Black Hat here. We're going to have a lot more coverage coming your way.

You're watching Techstrong TV.