Company journey and evolution

Founded in 2017 with an exclusive focus on financially motivated cybercrime on the dark web, the company has since broadened its scope to encompass all exposure management, an evolution that reflects the dynamic threat landscape and the need to identify any type of digital exposure an organization might face.

“The team very quickly realized that in order to be a global company and scale, we needed to broaden the problem space that we were trying to solve for, and so that was just a natural evolution,” Menz explained.

Flare’s platform is now designed to help organizations identify and manage exposure across the dark and clear web, as well as new risks stemming from new AI technologies.

Menz identified two critical components of the exposure issue. The first is the sheer volume of data, now widely dispersed across enterprises and various AI providers, which significantly increases credential exposure risk.

Menz cited the 2025 Verizon DBIR, which found that 88 percent of web application breaches are due to the use of stolen credentials. Flare’s identity exposure management, launched in October 2025, automates the detection and remediation of exposed credentials

The second is identity exposure; not only human identities, but also the emerging non-human identities, such as AI agents. “What is the integrity of that agent?” Menz elaborated, “Are they doing the job that we’ve asked them to do, or has the data set that they’re working with been polluted? Has the instruction set that they’re working with, has that been polluted?

“Going from not just external exposure management, but also to internal exposure management, we start looking at where the risk is coming from before the data gets exposed and leaked.”

Strategic focus and innovation

Flare is concentrating its efforts on developing a platform that can detect all types of exposure, with a specific emphasis on emerging threats originating from AI and the dark web.

While AI is certainly a critical component of Flare’s strategy, Menz underscored that the technical challenge of monitoring the dark web, particularly in dynamic environments like Telegram, where Flare monitors over 50,000 channels, requires a mix of human-informed technology.

Human knowledge directs the data collection and the application of initial filters, while algorithms and prioritization rules, developed through expert insight, efficiently process and sort vast amounts of data at scale. Automated crawlers mimic human review to determine content relevance, and generative AI enhances a prioritized subset of events by providing additional context, summarization or translation.

A remote-first company with key talent hubs in Montreal, a place with a rich AI and tech ecosystem supported by world-class universities and competitive incentives, Menz attributes Flare’s success to its ability to attract and retain top AI and cybersecurity talent.

“If you look at the work coming out of many of the universities in Canada, they’re very innovative, and it’s a very supportive ecosystem for AI.

“Canada (also) has a number of AI-focused institutes such as AMII, MILA and the Vector Institute.” These institutions have played central roles in fostering AI research and innovation, including contributing to the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy.

“In addition to that, Canada has a great reputation in areas like robotics and other types of industrial, autonomous innovations. And I think it’s because anywhere where you have a highly educated populace, which, frankly, only comes from strong government support, you end up with a big opportunity to innovate.”

Menz also highlighted a common hurdle for Canadian startups: around 80 percent are acquired at below value, limiting their ability to scale into more significant players. He pointed to Cohere, a Canadian enterprise-grade AI company recently raising US$500 million with a valuation of over US$7 billion, as a positive exception.

“As great as the community is, there needs to be a willingness for investors to lean in and support these companies at meaningful valuations so that they can be competitive in the market.”

Future trends and challenges

Looking ahead, Flare is focused on evolving its platform to manage the growing complexity of exposure risk, especially as enterprises adopt AI technologies.

The company’s goal is to move closer to real-time prevention by automating responses such as locking accounts or forcing password resets, proactively protecting organizations before malicious actors can exploit vulnerabilities.

Market expansion is integral to Flare’s strategy, with its European operations exemplifying the need to tailor solutions to diverse regulatory environments, languages and customer expectations.

Menz said that Europe has quickly become the company’s second-largest market, while plans are underway for the Asia-Pacific entry.

However, careful, phased growth aligned with local conditions is viewed as essential for sustainable success. “We try to move very quickly and be agile, but we want to lay the foundation to support the scale,” Menz said, emphasizing the importance of building strong foundational systems and processes that can sustain rapid growth without compromising stability or quality.

Overall, Flare’s global strategy intertwines deep technological expertise with local market sensibilities and a strong cultural foundation, leaving it well-positioned in the emerging era of exposure management in cybersecurity worldwide.