S13|E14 Behind the Research: A Conversation with the Creators of Antares

Description: The prevailing belief in artificial intelligence is that bigger models always equal better intelligence. But when it comes to high-stakes, specialized tasks like vulnerability discovery and code security, purpose-built models are rewriting the playbook. In this episode of Cisco Champion Radio, our panel sits down with the engineering minds behind Antares-Cisco's specialized AI model designed to navigate real-world software repositories and pinpoint vulnerabilities with surgical precision. We explore how a compact, highly tailored model can rival and outperform massive frontier models on specialized domain tasks. 🔍 In This Episode, We Cover: Meet Antares: What Antares is, the critical problem it solves in the modern DevSecOps pipeline, and where it fits within the automated vulnerability discovery lifecycle. Specialization Over Scale: How the team engineered a small, efficient model to deliver world-class performance without the massive compute overhead of generalized frontier models. The Engineering Blueprint: The role of curated training datasets, advanced post-training, reinforcement learning (RL), and autonomous tool use in enabling agents to navigate complex codebases. Lessons from the Trenches: What worked, what failed, and how the team's methodology evolved through rapid experimentation. Introducing VLocBench: Why existing industry benchmarks fell short, what realistic vulnerability localization actually requires, and how VLocBench establishes a new standard for evaluating code security models. The Future of Specialized AI: What the success of Antares signals for the broader AI landscape, and where task-specific models will beat general-purpose LLMs in enterprise engineering. Whether you're a security researcher, software architect, or AI practitioner, this episode offers a deep technical look at the future of agentic security. Cisco guests Supriti VIjay, AI Research Scientist, Foundation AI Aman Priyanshu, AI Researcher Scientist, Foundation AI Cisco Champion Hosts Liam Keegan, VP of Technology, RX3 Communications, Inc. Rickey Keith, Vertical Systems Engineer, WWT Girard Kavelines, Network Security Engineer, Aqueduct Technologies Moderator Danielle Carter, Cisco, CCR Program/ Customer Voices