As malicious actors weaponize AI to exploit software vulnerabilities at an unprecedented rate, enterprises are increasingly recognizing the need to strengthen their cybersecurity defenses.
Fortunately, these AI tools can also help businesses respond.
The need for these capabilities helped Exaforce, an AI startup that detects and stops attacks in real time, secure a $125 million 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.
The large funding round comes just a 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 massive market opportunity that investors see in the space.
Exaforce says it uses AI agents called “Exabots” with deep data analysis capabilities to automate security operations, relieving the burden on human analysts.
For Ankur Singla, the startup’s co-founder and CEO, the mission is simple. The idea is to apply AI to spot and stop threats as they occur. “It’s a very simple command, but it’s very complex to execute,” he said.
The real challenge for security teams is that most threat alerts are false positives. “Security operations personnel receive hundreds of alerts. How do we know which alerts are actually the highest priority?” Umesh Padval, managing partner at Seligman Ventures, likened the work of security teams to finding a needle in a haystack.
Exaforce claims its AI platform can reduce time-consuming manual tasks by up to 90%.
Recognizing the rise in cyberattacks, the startup recently introduced “Vibe Hunting,” a feature that allows security teams to investigate potential attacks with simple intuition by querying natural language against an AI platform. “Vibe hunting allows you to ask very simple hypotheses, such as ‘Have we seen a new attack from Iran?’” Singla said.
Exaforce officially launched its product in the fourth quarter of last year after two years of testing with design partners. The startup has since added 20 customers, including notable names like Replit and Guardant Health. Due to the rise in cyberattacks, Singla told TechCrunch that Exaforce expects to have 40 to 50 customers by the end of the year.
High-profile attacks have “strengthened our ability to reach customers because now they’re not asking, ‘Why do I need this?’” Singla said. Now the question he hears more often is, “How can I run it?”
Exaforce is not alone in applying AI to security operations. The company faces competition from startups like 7ai, Dropzone AI, and Prophet Security, as well as industry giants Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike.
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