Protect AI, a prominent player in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) security, has announced the completion of a $60 million Series B funding round. Led by Evolution Equity Partners, the round saw participation from 01 Advisors, StepStone Group, Samsung, and existing investors Acrew Capital, boldstart ventures, Knollwood Capital, Pelion Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures. This new funding brings the total raised by Protect AI to $108.5 million, aimed at enhancing the security of ML systems and AI applications against emerging threats and vulnerabilities.
The infusion of capital will drive the next phase of innovation for Protect AI’s customers, particularly in enhancing its AI security posture management (AI-SPM) platform. The company plans to use the funds to expand customer success and sales resources, advance research and development, and strengthen its channel programs. Protect AI is set to extend its leadership in the AI security market, offering unmatched protection for AI applications and systems globally.
Richard Seewald, Founder and Managing Partner at Evolution Equity Partners, highlighted the company’s rapid progress: “In less than 12 months, Protect AI has built the leading AI security platform in the market by addressing AI risks end-to-end. 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 securing $35 million in Series A funding a year ago, Protect AI has cemented its leadership in AI security. Its AI-SPM platform, now adopted by both private and public sector customers, secures traditional ML models, LLMs, ML systems, and AI applications. The platform has grown from one to five products, making it the most comprehensive end-to-end AI security solution available.
Protect AI’s huntr AI/ML threat research community, with over 15,000 members, identifies and fixes vulnerabilities in critical AI/ML supply chain projects. The company’s five open-source offerings have been downloaded millions of times, and its MLSecOps.com platform continues to lead in AI security education and knowledge sharing. Protect AI’s acquisitions—Rebuff, Huntr, Laiyer AI, and SydeLabs—coupled with a 300% year-over-year team growth, position the company for further expansion, including plans to add 50 more employees by the end of 2024.
Ian Swanson, Co-Founder and CEO of Protect AI, emphasized the growing importance of AI security: “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. 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.”
Protect AI’s industry-leading AI-SPM solution offers comprehensive security capabilities. Guardian scans internally built and externally acquired ML models for threats, while Layer is a dedicated GenAI security tool designed for LLM security, observability, and governance. Additional services include Radar, providing an AI/ML bill of materials with a robust policy engine, and Sightline, which is an AI/ML threat feed derived from the huntr community’s unique supply chain research.
To further enhance AI security, Protect AI acquired SydeLabs before closing the Series B round. SydeLabs’ SydeBox, an automated red teaming tool for GenAI systems, helps customers identify vulnerabilities and improve the security of their LLM-based applications. Ankita Kumari, Co-Founder of SydeLabs, noted, “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.”
Channel partners, integrators, and resellers will benefit significantly from Protect AI’s platform and ongoing 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.
Todd Hathaway, Global Practice Manager for AI Security Solutions at World Wide Technology (WWT), a global technology solutions provider with $20 billion in annual revenue, remarked: “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.”
