As bad actors weaponize AI to exploit software vulnerabilities at unprecedented speed, businesses are increasingly recognizing the need to strengthen their cybersecurity defenses.
Fortunately, these AI tools are also helping businesses fight back.
The need for such capabilities helped Exaforce, an AI startup that detects and thwarts attacks in real-time, secure $125 million in Series B. The round valued the three-year-old startup at $725 million and included participation from HarbourVest, Peak XV, Mayfield, Khosla Ventures and Seligman Ventures.
This major funding round comes just one year after Exaforce raised $75 million in Series A, bringing its total funding to $200 million. The influx of capital highlights both the high cost of building and selling AI-enabled security operations centers (SOCs) and the large market opportunity investors see in this space.
Exaforce says it uses AI agents called “Exabots” to perform deep data analysis to automate security operations and reduce the heavy lifting of human analysts.
The startup's co-founder and CEO Ankur Singla's mission is simple. It's about applying AI to catch and stop threats as they occur. “This is a very simple mission, but very complex to execute,” he said.
The real challenge for security teams is that the vast majority of threat alerts are false positives. “Security operations professionals receive hundreds of alerts. How do they know what is the real high-priority alert?” Umesh Padval, managing partner at Seligman Ventures, likens the security team's job to finding a needle in a haystack.
Exaforce claims its AI platform can reduce time-consuming manual tasks by as much as 90%.
Recognizing the rise in cyber-attacks, the startup recently introduced “Vibe Hunting”. This is a feature that allows security teams to query their AI platforms in natural language and investigate potential attacks based on a simple hunch. “With Vibe Hunting, you can form very simple hypotheses like, 'Did we get another attack from Iran?'” Singla said.
Exaforce officially brought its product to market in the fourth quarter of last year after two years of testing with design partners. The startup has since added 20 customers, including notable companies like Replit and Guardant Health. Due to the rise in cyberattacks, Singla told TechCrunch that he expects Exaforce to reach 40 to 50 customers by the end of the year.
High-profile attacks have “significantly enhanced our ability to reach customers, because they no longer ask, 'Why do I want this?'” Singla said. The question he hears a lot now is, “How can we operate?”
Exaforce is not alone in applying AI to security operations. The company faces competition from startups such as 7ai, Dropzone AI, and Prophet Security, as well as industry giants Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike.
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