About

Building the future of secure AI development

We're on a mission to protect how teams interact with AI ensuring sensitive code never leaves their control.

Founded 2025

Inception

Los Angeles

Headquarters

Open Beta

Stage

10+

Developers

Why Pretense

Your AI Tools Are Stealing Your Code

Real-time code protection

Your code gets hidden before AI sees it.

Automation built into your workflow

Works with the tools you already pay for.

Real-time insights and analytics

See every leak before it becomes a lawsuit.

Enterprise-grade access control

Lock down who sees what.

Mission

Your private stuff never reaches the AI. The AI still gets the work done.

Vision

Every team works with AI and nothing private ever walks out the door.

Principles

Built to keep sensitive code private without breaking context, visibility, or AI output quality.

our story

Why we built Pretense to protect code

Why we built Pretense

In early 2023, Samsung engineers accidentally pasted proprietary semiconductor source code into ChatGPT - three separate times in under a month. The code reached OpenAI's servers and could never be retracted. Samsung banned internal AI tool usage entirely, but the damage was done. That incident was not an anomaly. It was a preview of what happens when enterprise code meets consumer AI with zero guardrails.

  • No control over code shared with AI tools

  • Redaction breaks context and reduces output quality

  • Code Protection protects data without losing code context

Jimmy Malhan

Founder & CEO

17 years of engineering and SaaS experience across AbbVie/Allergan, Amazon, and multiple startups. Built production AI systems serving millions of users. Deep domain expertise in HIPAA and SOC2 compliance. Founded Pretense after watching proprietary code leak through AI tools at every company he worked with.

Jaynal Abedin

UI/UX Lead

Jimmy Malhan

Founder & CEO

Muhammad Moiz Ur Rehman Khan

Head of Marketing

CODE PROTECTION FLOW

How Pretense protects your code

STEP 1
Install the CLI

Set up Pretense in seconds with a simple command—no complex configuration needed.

STEP 2
Connect your workflow

Integrate with your existing tools and AI environment seamlessly and instantly.

STEP 3
Detect sensitive data

Scan your code to identify proprietary identifiers, variables, and secrets efficiently.

STEP 4
Protect identifiers

Replace sensitive data with safe, synthetic equivalents while preserving structure.

STEP 5
Send to AI safely

Process fully functional code through AI without exposing real data securely and reliably.

STEP 6
Restore and deliver results

Automatically reverse Code Protection mappings and return accurate, secure AI responses instantly.