OpenAI Weighs Deal for One-Time Security Partner Trail of Bits

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 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.”