Lanai announced its edge-based AI Observability Agent, a platform to run AI detection models directly on enterprise devices rather than routing sensitive conversations through centralized infrastructure.
This launch introduces AI Interaction Discovery, which solves what traditional network monitoring and static "approved AI lists" cannot, while providing prompt-level visibility into employee GenAI interactions across any application, embedded, native, or newly released, without sending data outside company boundaries.
"CEOs want companies to be AI-first. But leadership teams, especially CISOs and CIOs are being asked to manage and secure something they can't see," said Lexi Reese, CEO of Lanai. "And the truth is, Shadow AI isn't a threat; it's your productivity pipeline that needs governance, not shutdown. Traditional tools might catch someone visiting ChatGPT.com, but they can't tell you whether that employee had a casual conversation or shared company trade secrets."
Reese added, "The question isn't 'How do we control AI?' It is 'How do we secure and scale what's working while cutting off what's dangerous?' Lanai turns AI governance from a brake into an accelerator."
By deploying lightweight AI models directly on employee devices, Lanai delivers dynamic detection across any application without static lists, and with real-time prompt analysis for sensitive data and workflow insights. Deployment takes less than 24 hours via standard MDM systems, with no infrastructure changes required.
Beyond discovering AI usage, Lanai's browser-level detection reveals the critical context that determines whether employee innovation becomes business value or regulatory violation. This is essential for highly regulated industries like healthcare, financial services, insurance, legal, and government contracting, where the difference between compliant and non-compliant AI use can mean the difference between competitive advantage and catastrophic penalties.
"We're essentially moving AI observability from the network to the edge," explained Steve Herrod, co-founder of Lanai and former VMware CTO. "It's like the shift from monitoring server rooms to having telemetry inside every virtual machine. Traditional approaches see network traffic or ping static lists that do not update dynamically; we see the actual prompt interactions and where real risks and value live."
Founded by enterprise infrastructure veterans including Herrod and Reese (former Google ML ads platform leader and Gusto COO), along with CTO Rajesh Raman and CPO Mohit Mehta (architects of SignalFx, acquired by Splunk for $1.05B), Lanai has raised a Seed round of $11.5M.
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