Funding to venture-backed cybersecurity startups has trended up so far this year, and Thursday saw another sign of that.
Exaforce locked up a $75 million Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures, Mayfield Fund 1 and Thomvest Ventures.
The San Jose, California-based startup is helping bring artificial intelligence agents to security operations centers, or SOC. The idea is, with the help of data, to significantly reduce human-led SOC work while improving security outcomes.
“Our vision is to empower SOC teams with an intelligent platform that allows humans to collaborate seamlessly with AI agents—integrating precise human oversight with advanced automation,” said co-founder and CEO Ankur Singla in a release. “By harnessing Exabots alongside advanced data exploration, we reduce false positives and eliminate tedious busywork—all while giving humans the flexibility to choose where they want to be hands-on.”
Intersection of AI and security
Just last week, Umesh Padval, a managing director at Thomvest Ventures who participated in the round told Crunchbase News one significant trend driving interest in this space is AI, and more specifically, agentic AI.
“It has the potential to make cybersecurity professionals more effective, streamline operations and reduce the time to resolution of critical hacks within enterprise security operations centers,” he said. “Automation is emerging as a critical solution in these environments.”
Funding in general to VC-backed cyber startups topped $2.7 billion in Q1, per Crunchbase data. That’s a 29% increase from the last quarter of 2024, and just a slight dip from the $2.8 billion raised in the same quarter last year.
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