Avi Kapur: The Cybersecurity Expert Who Dropped Out at 19 to Fight Phishing with AI

Image credit: Avi Kapur/Extrian

Picture this: You get an email from your boss, a request for a wire transfer to be completed “today, ASAP.” Something feels off, but it’s from his correct address, and it’s related to a deal your team has been working on for weeks. You complete the request and get on with the day.

Another email soon arrives with the dreaded words: you’ve just been phished. It’s all been a simulation conducted by Extrian, one of Silicon Valley’s newest AI cybersecurity startups. Founded by CEO Avi Kapur, Extrian is defining the future of how organizations defend against sophisticated social engineering attacks.

The Road to Founding Extrian

Kapur grew up in Dubai, where he stood out among his peers as a top student at the Hartland International School and gained recognition as a UAE Math Olympiad champion. During his sophomore year at Hartland, Kapur was invited to San Francisco for an AI talent search event. There, he met his future co-founder, Luke Bousfield, and together they would advance their AI research throughout high school.

Throughout his studies, Kapur’s area of specialization was mechanistic interpretability — a field that explores how AI makes decisions about what to say based on relationships between different “thoughts” generated when responding to requests. A better understanding of this process is critical to establishing guardrails on AI, ensuring their outputs are beneficial to humans and don’t mask divergent thoughts that encourage unethical behavior.

Kapur went on to attend U.C. Berkeley, studying electrical engineering and computer science. But as he became increasingly interested in the application of AI and cybersecurity, he sensed an untapped opportunity to apply his research to real-world challenges. Knowing he could make a very real difference without a formal degree, he dropped out to become the full-time CEO of Extrian before his 20th birthday.

Extrian’s AI Agent Advantage

Extrian uses AI-driven simulations to autonomously send and follow up on highly realistic phishing emails. Unlike mass emails that cast a wide net to find a weak link, Extrian’s AI agents can personalize its communications, respond to replies, and pressure employees who show signs of weakness.

Tactics like emotional manipulation, urgent language, and domain spoofing are all on the table. It sounds harsh, but this short-term discomfort is far better than the long-term consequences of a breach. If a target is successfully phished, Extrian automatically follows up with customized instructions on how to spot these pressure points and defend against future attacks.

By delivering dynamic, personalized interactions, Extrian aims to develop a deeper level of trust with employees than has ever been possible before. In doing so, it builds resistance to phishing attacks in ways that training videos and off-the-shelf programs can’t match.

Building Trust Through Execution as a Cybersecurity Startup

As a young founder in a high-stakes industry, Kapur found that convincing businesses to adopt Extrian wasn’t a simple task.

“As a young founder with a new startup, one of my biggest career challenges was earning trust in such a trust-driven field,” Kapur explains. “Initially, clients were skeptical due to our age and lack of industry history.”

But early adopters soon realized Extrian was more than a finely-tuned phishing simulator. Its customized feedback provided to employees could actively increase their businesses’ resistance to phishing attempts at all levels of the organization.

“Our product was simply too effective to ignore,” Kapur said. “The quality spoke for itself, and once companies saw results, trust quickly followed. Now, Extrian works with a growing network of clients and is becoming recognized as a leader in cybersecurity.”

Combating Social Engineering in the AI Era

With a growing track record of helping businesses strengthen their defenses against social engineering, Kapur aims to use Extrian to offer even greater protection. Using data aggregated from employee interactions with phishing simulations, Extrain has started providing deeper insights into user behavior and tracking persistent vulnerabilities. Features like instant alerts about suspicious behavior and security dashboards that monitor employee interactions are helping define the growing startup as a key contributor to the future of cybersecurity.

As hackers get smarter and attacks more sophisticated, robust simulations like those powered by Extrian are likely to be the best defense against costly phishing attacks. Young founders like Avi Kapur are emerging as leaders in the battle against phishers and hackers and are poised to define the next generation of AI-powered cybersecurity defense.