Protect AI, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) security company, has successfully closed a $35M Series A funding round. The funding was led by Evolution Equity Partners, with active participation from Salesforce Ventures and existing investors, including Acrew Capital, boldstart ventures, Knollwood Capital, and Pelion Ventures. To date, Protect AI has raised a total of $48.5M to address the critical need for safeguarding ML systems and AI applications against unique security vulnerabilities, data breaches, and emerging threats.
The latest financing will be utilized to scale sales and marketing efforts, go-to-market activities, research and development, and customer success initiatives. As part of the funding announcement, Protect AI revealed that Richard Seewald, Founder and Managing Partner at Evolution Equity Partners, has joined the company’s Board of Directors. Seewald brings with him over three decades of expertise in cybersecurity, enterprise software, and data analytics, bolstering the company’s leadership with his valuable insights.
Richard Seewald expressed his confidence in Protect AI’s capabilities, stating, “Despite the sheer magnitude of the AI/ML security challenge, none of the industry’s largest cybersecurity vendors currently offer a solution to this problem. Protect AI’s founders have built and managed the largest AI/ML businesses in the world for AWS and Oracle, and have assembled one of the most accomplished teams I’ve seen in a startup. The company has the vision, technology, and expertise to capture a lion’s share of this new market category.”
Protect AI recognizes that many organizations, even the most advanced ones, lack a detailed inventory of assets and elements used in their ML systems. This is partly due to the rapid growth in supply chain assets, such as foundational models and third-party training data sets. Traditional security tools also lack visibility into the dynamic nature of ML systems and data workflows. Additionally, most organizations lack the skills and resources to detect threats and vulnerabilities in the ML supply chain. These blindspots expose organizations to various AI security challenges, including regulatory compliance risks, PII leakages, data manipulation, model poisoning, infrastructure protection, and reputational risk.
In response to these challenges, Protect AI has developed a revolutionary platform called AI Radar. This platform empowers AI developers, ML engineers, and AppSec professionals to gain visibility into their ML environments, helping them to identify and remediate risks swiftly and maintain robust security for ML systems and AI applications.
Ian Swanson, co-founder, and CEO of Protect AI emphasized the significance of AI applications across industries, highlighting the pressing need for enhanced security measures. “Protect AI provides new and innovative solutions, like AI Radar, that enable organizations to build, deploy, and manage safer AI by monitoring, detecting, and remediating security vulnerabilities and threats in real-time,” said Swanson. He further expressed enthusiasm about the funding, which will help the company scale and capitalize on the immense market opportunity ahead. Additionally, Protect AI welcomes Evolution Equity Partners and Salesforce Ventures as new investors, while embracing Richard Seewald’s expertise as a valuable addition to their board.