The next world war will not start with missiles. It will start with a line of code, and whether the United States is ready for that depends, in part, on the kind of work a small, secretive startup in Silicon Valley is doing right now. Adversaries are not waiting. China and Russia have spent years embedding themselves inside American infrastructure — power grids, water networks, communications systems — quietly mapping weaknesses and widening their access. State-sponsored hacking groups work around the clock.
What has changed recently, and dangerously, is the addition of artificial intelligence to that arsenal, giving those groups the ability to move faster, strike harder, and adapt in real time. The American Security Project found that AI-assisted cyber infiltrations increased 220 percent year-over-year since 2022, with cloud intrusions surging 136 percent from 2024 to 2025 alone. The pace of that threat is accelerating, and the United States’ response must match it.
That is the mission driving Zealot Labs, a YC W25 startup that has built an AI system capable of autonomously finding vulnerabilities in government infrastructure and executing cyber operations at machine speed. The company operates in stealth for strategic reasons — the nature of the work demands it — but its purpose is clear: put the United States and its allies in a position of strength in the cyberspace conflict that is already underway.
In National Security, Speed Is the Only Thing That Matters
At the heart of Zealot Labs is a simple but consequential idea. The US military employs full-time hackers: cyber operators whose job is to study foreign networks, look for attack vectors, and conduct intelligence operations to keep adversaries in check. That work is painstaking, slow, and resource-intensive when done solely by human hands. Zealot Labs automates it.
The company’s core product builds AI agents that can find bugs in firmware and infrastructure without human intervention, then act on them. The goal is not to replace skilled operators within US defense agencies, but to dramatically multiply what they can do. In a war context, where decisions are made in seconds, and vulnerabilities are exploited before a defense team can blink, that speed is not a luxury. It is a requirement for survival.
Srivastava has spoken plainly about what Zealot Labs is up against. “China and Russia have infinite power because of AI hackers, and that is something we really want to prevent,” he said. “There are bigger guaranteed risks on the other side of the safety thing, and so we try and keep both risks in mind and calibrate our work according to that.” That kind of clarity, from someone helping build the tools that will determine how this conflict plays out, is significant. The risks are real on both sides. Calibrating carefully is what separates a responsible defense tool from a reckless one.
The Man Driving The Machine
Avi Srivastava did not arrive at Zealot Labs by accident. He built his record across several AI ventures before turning his attention to national security. He scaled one AI platform, PenParrot, to 150 paying customers within weeks of launch. He later built Pentra.io, which, he says, produced the world’s most accurate legal content generator. Before that, he helped grow another AI startup to nearly $1 million in annual recurring revenue as Head of Growth. He was offered a CEO role there and turned it down to pursue something he considered more important. What drove that turn toward defense was a conviction about what matters most.
“I’ve always been driven by doing important things,” Srivastava said during a recent conversation. “US national security, Western national security, especially heading into a very turbulent world where we don’t know all the answers with AI. It’s very important that we maintain things that we do know we value the most.” He was also the youngest-ever invitee to the Elevate IX pitching competition, won funding as one of four teams out of 278, and twice took first place at the International Mental Math Competition, which draws up to 10,000 participants annually. These are not the achievements of someone who drifts. They point to a mind that competes at the highest level and chooses where to aim with intention.
At Zealot Labs, Srivastava serves as Director of Operations and Member of Technical Staff. His primary role is to ensure the team moves faster than the threats it is pursuing. He talks about pace the way a field commander talks about position — it is everything. He coordinates across product and go-to-market functions, keeps information flowing to decision-makers, and pushes a culture where execution speed is non-negotiable. The company is backed by some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent investors, having raised a nine-figure pre-seed, which speaks to the confidence the broader tech and defense investment community has placed in what Zealot Labs is building.
Silicon Valley Meets The Pentagon
What makes Zealot Labs unusual in this space is its composition. The team draws on people who have done elite-level offensive cyber operations inside US government agencies, combined with engineers from Silicon Valley who have built and scaled AI products at speed. Srivastava has described it as equal parts military experience and startup velocity — two worlds that rarely coexist.
That combination matters because the US government’s traditional procurement cycle is not built for the pace of cyberwarfare. Defense agencies navigate lengthy approval chains and regulatory requirements that, while necessary, can slow the delivery of tools operators need now. Srivastava acknowledged this tension candidly, noting the challenge of getting government systems to move at the speed of a Silicon Valley team. The tension is real, and Zealot Labs is finding ways to work within it rather than around it. “Active communication is what helps us keep a pulse on things and keep everything going in a changing environment,” he said.
There is also broader political momentum behind this kind of work. The current US administration has signaled a stronger appetite for AI-powered offensive and defensive capabilities, and for working with fast-moving startups rather than relying solely on legacy contractors. For Srivastava, that shift has been energizing. He described it as something that has not happened in decades: a government willing to move with the urgency the moment demands.
The stakes are not abstract. Power grids, water systems, communications networks: these are the targets adversaries have already been probing. Zealot Labs is building the tools the US needs to conduct its own operations more forcefully, deter attacks before they land, and respond faster when they do. The company is young, it is in stealth, and the full scope of what it has built will likely not be public for some time. But the direction is unmistakable. In the contest for dominance in cyberspace, the United States’ answer is to run through startups like this one and people like Avi Srivastava, who chose this fight on purpose.