Cisco Invests In 'Universal AI Translator' Upstart Fleak

Fleak offers an AI-powered universal translator for enterprise data that transforms how organizations handle security logs and machine data, according to the two companies.

Tech giant Cisco Systems has revealed an investment into one-year old Fleak.ai, a startup that specializes in simplifying complex data workflows using AI.

Fleak refers to itself as an AI-powered universal translator for enterprise data that transforms how organizations handle security logs and machine data. Fleak's low-code platform eliminates the need for extensive infrastructure management, which frees up data teams to focus on innovation. With its serverless solution that simplifies the creation, integration, and scaling of data workflows, Fleak transforms complex processes into straightforward, scalable solutions, according to the San Jose, Calif.-based startup.

Cisco Investments, the company's corporate venture arm, has invested in Fleak to accelerate its mission of making enterprise machine data immediately understandable, consistent, and AI-ready across industries, the tech giant said Thursday.

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"In the AI era, data is the fuel that drives every model, decision, and outcome. But for many enterprises, it’s trapped in incompatible formats, scattered systems, and silos that starve AI and security platforms of the quality they need to operate at full power … Fleak is tackling what they call the first-mile data intelligence problem: ensuring that machine data is understandable, universally consistent, and AI-ready in real-time," said Bonnie Zhang, corporate development and ventures senior manager For Cisco-owned Splunk in her post about the latest investment.

Last year Cisco unveiled a $1 billion global AI investment fund targeting strategic investments in startup companies that build offerings based on Cisco’s strategy and infrastructure. The tech giant since 2024 has so far invested in a handful of AI startups, including Cohere, Mistral AI, Scale AI and Gruve AI, which in August became the second company worldwide to achieve the designation of Global Cisco Managed XDR (MXDR) Partner.

Founded in 2024, Fleak partners with Databricks, IBM, and Palo Alto Networks, according to its website. In addition to Cisco, Fleak's investors include Oak Seed Ventures, Netflix and Splunk.

Fleak is a women-owned upstart founded by CEO Yichen Jin and CTO Bo Lei.

Last month at the Splunk .conf25 event Cisco executives, including president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel, said that the kind of machine data managed by Fleak’s technology will play a major role in filling the data gaps that are holding back broader use of AI and agentic AI.