Consus (YC F24) – LLM gateway for companies handling sensitive data

Hey Hacker News! I'm Eric, the founder of Consus. We route all AI requests to ITAR restricted and controlled unclassified information (CUI) compliant infrastructure. Consus itself satisfies ITAR restrictions, and we recently completed our FedRAMP equivalency audit against the 410 FedRAMP High controls. FedRAMP High is the U.S. government’s strictest security baseline for cloud services handling sensitive unclassified data. A breach of this data could cause severe or catastrophic harm. Achieving FedRAMP equivalency, or authorization, is required before processing CUI information.Demo: https://youtu.be/6MYxJe6P4oYAerospace and defense is experiencing rapid growth. Unfortunately, most companies are struggling to use AI because of necessary data protections & compliance risk. These companies can move even faster if they could use the AI tools that most other industries take for granted.I spent most of my career prior to Consus in aerospace & defense. I launched national security payloads at SpaceX, and was an early employee at Castelion. I’ve watched first hand how compliance red-tape makes it difficult for companies to adopt new technologies and trust vendors that touch their sensitive data. For example, I worked with a satellite manufacturer that doesn’t allow any AI tools, even for non-sensitive work.Even as AI has become extremely useful over the past 9-12 months, I was surprised by how many aerospace & defense companies refused to touch it. They could see how it could be helpful, but they were scared about model providers training on their data, violating an ITAR rule, or risk losing new business because of a failed cyber assessment. These are all rational fears.There were a lot of ways to solve some/all of these problems, but we focused on building a compliant AI inference layer that can "plug" into any AI tool or workflow. Just as OpenRouter integrates with most tools, Consus can connect to tools like ChatGPT or Clau

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FL score

85

out of 100

Verdict

BUILD

high confidence

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Consus provides a FedRAMP-equivalent compliant AI gateway enabling aerospace and defense companies to safely use AI on sensitive data.

The pain

Aerospace and defense companies cannot use AI tools due to strict ITAR and CUI compliance requirements and fear of data breaches or regulatory violations.

The gap

No existing AI infrastructure fully satisfies the highest government security standards while allowing easy integration with popular AI tools.

Build angle

The founder’s aerospace and defense background combined with technical expertise enables building a compliant, secure AI routing layer that plugs into existing AI workflows.

Strengths

  • Clear, urgent compliance problem with real financial and operational impact
  • Strong founder domain expertise and relevant technical background
  • High barrier to entry due to regulatory complexity and FedRAMP equivalency
  • Growing aerospace and defense AI adoption market

Risks

  • Long sales cycles and complex procurement in government and defense sectors
  • Dependence on maintaining and updating compliance certifications
  • Niche market limits rapid scaling outside aerospace and defense
  • Potential competition from large cloud providers or AI vendors pursuing compliance

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