Protect AI, the leading artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) security company, announced it has closed a $60M Series B round of funding led by Evolution Equity Partners with participation from 01 Advisors, StepStone Group, Samsung, and existing investors Acrew Capital, boldstart ventures, Knollwood Capital, Pelion Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures. To date, the company has raised a total of $108.5M to help organizations protect ML systems and AI applications from unique security vulnerabilities and emerging threats.
Protect AI will use the new financing to drive the next phase of innovation and capabilities for its customers, enhancing its AI security posture management platform. This capital infusion will accelerate the company’s growth by expanding customer success and sales resources, advancing R&D, and strengthening channel programs. Protect AI is positioned to extend its lead in the AI security market, providing unmatched protection for AI applications and systems worldwide.
“In less than 12 months Protect AI has built the leading AI security platform in the market by addressing AI risks end-to-end,” said Richard Seewald, Founder and Managing Partner at Evolution Equity Partners. “By focusing on comprehensive AI security posture management that spans ML models, LLMs and AI supply chain threats, the company is now a trusted partner for national security organizations and Fortune 500 customers, alike.”
Since raising $35M in Series A funding one year ago, Protect AI has solidified its leadership in the AI security market. The Protect AI security posture management (AI-SPM) platform is now used by private and public sector customers to secure traditional ML models, LLMs, ML systems, and AI applications. The platform has expanded from one to five products, becoming the most comprehensive end-to-end AI security solution available.
The company’s huntr AI/ML threat research community has grown to more than 15,000 members who identify and fix vulnerabilities in crucial AI/ML supply chain projects. Protect AI’s five open-source offerings have been downloaded millions of times, and MLSecOps.com continues to lead AI security education and knowledge sharing. With four acquisitions to date — Rebuff, Huntr, Laiyer AI, and SydeLabs — and a 300% year-over-year team growth, Protect AI plans to add 50 more employees by the end of 2024.
“AI is being deployed across every industry at an accelerating pace, and organizations have realized they need security guardrails for these systems that are not being covered by incumbent security providers,” said Ian Swanson, Co-Founder and CEO of Protect AI. “This additional funding provides the resources to extend our technology lead by providing even more unique AI security capabilities for every element of AI-SPM, at every stage of the AI development lifecycle, and serve customers across the globe. Our mission is to lead the AI security category for years to come and help customers build a safer AI-powered world.”
End-to-End AI Protection, from One Platform
AI Security Posture Management, or AI-SPM, is the practice of continuously monitoring, managing, and improving the security of AI systems and their components. It involves identifying vulnerabilities, ensuring compliance with security policies, and implementing measures to protect AI models and data throughout their lifecycle. With AI-SPM, companies can ensure their AI systems operate securely and reliably, minimizing risks of breaches, misuse, and other security threats.
Protect AI’s industry-leading AI-SPM solution offers comprehensive security capabilities such as Guardian, which scans internally built ML models and externally acquired models for threats, and Layer which is a dedicated GenAI security tool designed for LLM security, observability, and governance. Additional services include Radar, providing AI/ML bill of materials with a robust policy engine, and Sightline, which is an AI/ML threat feed derived from the unique supply chain research conducted by the 15K+ Protect AI huntr community.
To further assist customers in securing their AI environments and GenAI applications, Protect AI acquired SydeLabs prior to the funding and closing of its Series B investment round. SydeLabs’ product, SydeBox, is an automated red teaming tool for GenAI systems that helps customers identify vulnerabilities, ensure safer model selection, and continuously improve the security of their LLM based applications.
“As companies are evaluating LLMs to power AI applications, it is essential to red team across multiple categories of risk from jailbreaks to prompt extraction and susceptibility to prompt injection attacks. SydeBox is the most advanced AI red teaming suite, and we are excited to add this solution to the Protect AI platform,” said SydeLabs Co Founder Ankita Kumari.
Channel partners, integrators, and resellers will also benefit significantly from the Protect AI platform and continued product advancements. By leveraging Protect AI’s comprehensive AI-SPM platform, partners can ensure their clients’ AI environments are secure, compliant, and resilient against threats.
World Wide Technology (WWT), a global technology solutions provider with $20B in annual revenue, is at the forefront of the secure AI Digital Revolution. By integrating strategy, execution, and partnerships, WWT accelerates secure AI transformations for large public and private organizations worldwide.
According to Todd Hathaway, Global Practice Manager for AI Security Solutions at WWT: “Our partnership with Protect AI perfectly aligns with our Global Cyber mission to deliver digital security excellence. Protect AI’s comprehensive AI security platform enhances our efforts to provide cutting-edge, secure AI and generative AI outcomes. With offerings for first and third party model security, LLM Security, AI-SPM, an AI/ML vulnerability database, and automated red teaming for GenAI systems, Protect AI stands unmatched in its breadth of security coverage for AI/ML systems it makes available to our customers.”
SOURCE: BusinessWire