Western intelligence agencies face a constraint that money alone cannot solve. The most technically demanding work in cybersecurity–finding bugs in mission-critical software, conducting network operations–requires the rarest technical skills. Avi Srivastava operates in this quiet but critically important zone. As the Director of Operations and a Member of the Technical Staff at Z-Labs, a stealth startup, Srivastava is working on using AI to directly address this problem, thereby bolstering the U.S.'s national security ambitions.
Z-Labs exists to solve the problem of bottlenecked cyber operators. Srivastava leads the charge in building autonomous AI agents capable of crawling through networks to identify bugs and security flaws for military personnel & intelligence operatives. The company's rapid ascent in building a team and success with customers suggests that investors see exactly what Srivastava sees. The old methods of manual code review and slow-moving audits are dead. The future belongs to autonomous agents that move with the speed of electricity.
The Architect of Autonomy
Intelligence agencies face a math problem they cannot solve with headcount. The number of potential targets–adversary networks, infrastructure, and systems–vastly exceeds the number of skilled operators who can develop tools against them. Bug finding & network access work in US government agencies is painstaking, highly technical work. A single exploit can take weeks or months of manual effort from some of the most skilled engineers on the planet. There simply aren't enough of them.
Z-Labs exists to break this bottleneck. Srivastava's role involves building the operational and technical infrastructure that allows AI agents to autonomously develop exploits at machine speed. Where a human operator might produce a handful of working exploits per year, Z-Labs' technology aims to compress that timeline dramatically, turning what was once an artisanal craft into a scalable capability.
The implications are significant. Western intelligence agencies have long maintained a technical superiority in offensive cyber operations, but this edge is eroding as adversaries invest heavily in their own capabilities. Z-Labs' autonomous agents represent a potential step-change: the ability to operate across a far broader attack surface than human teams could ever cover alone.
Most tech companies optimize for engagement metrics. Z-Labs optimizes for operational effectiveness in domains where the stakes are state-level. Srivastava drives the product operations that make these deployments possible, ensuring that when a Z-Labs agent is tasked against a target, it performs with the precision and reliability that intelligence customers demand.
A Serial Builder's Trajectory
Success in the startup world usually requires years of failure, but Srivastava operates on a compressed timeline. Before joining Z-Labs, he engineered a series of exits that would be the envy of founders twice his age. Starting out, he built PenParrot in Dubai, an AI product he scaled to hundreds of annual paying customers in a matter of weeks. He followed that with creating the world's most accurate legal content generator. In each instance, he identified a market need, built a solution, and scaled it with aggressive speed.
His tenure at Kaps, a startup building AI tooling for video editors, proved his ability to lead growth under pressure. As Head of Growth, he bootstrapped the company to nearly $1 million in annual recurring revenue. The founders offered him the CEO role—a golden ticket for any young executive. But Srivastava declined. He saw a more urgent calling in the defense sector. The decision to leave a clear path to wealth for the murky, difficult world of national security defines his character. He chose the harder problem because it mattered more to him.
This habit of seeking friction began early. While still a student at UT Dallas, where he studied Computer Science and Philosophy, he conducted research on scaling language models in verifiable domains. He did not just study the theory; he built practical applications. He founded The Spectrum Mill early on, a labor marketplace for the Middle East, raising significant grant funding to connect workers with opportunities. From marketplaces to high-speed SaaS, the through-line is an obsession with solving inefficiencies.
Coding the Future of Defense
The modern battlefield is digital. Wars are fought in the firmware of centrifuges and the databases of logistics hubs. Srivastava understands that the United States cannot win this war with a defensive crouch alone. It needs active, intelligent systems. His work at Z-Labs represents a shift in how the West thinks about its digital armor. We are moving from passive walls to active guardians.
Critics often worry about the role of AI in defense, fearing a loss of control over it. Srivastava's work suggests the opposite. By using agents to handle the immense complexity of modern codebases, humans gain more control, not less. We cannot secure billion-line systems with human eyes. We need machine speed to secure the machine world.
Avi Srivastava is barely at the beginning of his career, yet he has already reshaped segments of the legal, commercial, and now defense industries. He works at the bleeding edge, where code meets national survival. In the coming years, as the digital threats against the West grow more sophisticated, the shield that protects us will likely bear his fingerprints.
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