Tel Aviv startup raises $100 million to secure AI applications and autonomous agents

Investment in Noma Security comes as enterprises become more vulnerable to cyber threats, amid race to integrate AI agents and apps into their workflows

Sharon Wrobel is a tech reporter for The Times of Israel

Niv Braun (right) and Alon Tron, co-founders of Israeli cybersecurity startup Noma Security. (Omer Hacohen)
Niv Braun (right) and Alon Tron, co-founders of Israeli cybersecurity startup Noma Security. (Omer Hacohen)

Israeli startup Noma Security, the developer of a platform that detects security issues with AI-based applications and agents, said Thursday that it has raised $100 million in private funding.

The financing round was led by US venture capital firm Evolution Equity Partners. Existing investors, including Ballistic Ventures and Israeli venture capital fund Glilot Capital, also participated. The capital round brings total funds raised to date to $132 million.

Founded in 2023 by Niv Braun, CEO, and Alon Tron, CTO, who met in Israel’s prestigious 8200 intelligence unit, the startup emerged from stealth in November. The duo developed a one-stop shop single-security platform for AI-driven applications and autonomous agents, which it says enables businesses to adopt AI at scale by making security for AI as seamless and automatic as using it. The platform protects everything from critical infrastructure to consumer apps — both proactively and in real-time.

Noma said its platform helps Fortune 500 businesses “identify millions of AI and AI agent risks while simultaneously prioritizing and mitigating novel threats at scale.”

The fresh capital will be used to further expand the startup’s operations across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and to more rapidly grow its product, research and development teams in Tel Aviv. Noma has a workforce of 40 employees, mainly based in Israel and the US.

The rapid development and adoption of AI-based tools, systems, and models have introduced a new security landscape, challenging businesses to keep potential cyber threats and attacks, including data breaches and ransomware, under control. Generative AI applications, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or Microsoft’s Copilot, which can create complex content, text, audio, and video that resembles human creativity, are increasingly embedded in company workplaces.

Illustration: The OpenAI logo is seen displayed on a cell phone with an image on a computer monitor generated by ChatGPT’s Dall-E text-to-image model, December 8, 2023, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

The latest is the evolution of agentic AI or virtual AI agents, which act similarly to smart assistants, using reasoning to make real-time decisions and complete complex tasks with minimal human input.

The interest and investment in the development of security solutions come as cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated, with attackers leveraging AI to outsmart traditional defenses and exploit blind spots in data and cloud systems of businesses and corporations.

On Wednesday, Palo Alto Networks, a Santa Clara, California-based cybersecurity firm founded by American-Israeli entrepreneur Nir Zuk, announced that it will buy Israeli firm CyberArk in a deal valued at a staggering $25 billion.

Noma said the investment comes at a “critical time for enterprise chief information security officers (CISOs) as they race to secure and govern agentic AI,” ahead of the adoption of the autonomous assistants into existing software systems, business processes, and workflows. About 53% of surveyed organizations plan to adopt agentic AI by 2026, with 83% adopting AI agents by 2028, Noma said, citing UBS Research.

“AI agent adoption is exploding within our customer base and CISOs understand that AI innovation must be thoughtfully deployed with full guardrails,” said Braun. “Noma Security is the only cybersecurity vendor to offer an end-to-end platform purpose-built to identify and mitigate the uniquely advanced risks of agentic AI.”

“Alongside our customers and partners, we built the most comprehensive security and governance solution for both AI and agents,” he added.

Noma said its annual recurring revenue (ARR) increased more than 1,300% in the last year as it recruited dozens of customers across financial services, life sciences, retail, and big tech sectors.

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