Bodyguards for AI agents: A massive $113 million raise for Onyx Security
Cybersecurity firm Onyx Security has raised $113 million in a Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The company's platform enables organizations to securely and controllably deploy AI agents, mitigating risks associated with autonomous machine operations.
The cyber company Onyx Security has raised $113 million in a Series B round, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, about a year after raising $40 million in a seed round. It is estimated that the company's valuation in the latest round is approximately $640 million, a significant jump compared to the previous funding.
The company's platform allows organizations to operate AI agents in a secure and controlled manner, while managing permissions, monitoring actions, and preventing risks arising from the autonomous activity of machines. The current funding will be used to train the next generation of models developed by the company, and to expand business development and marketing activities in the USA and other markets.
Onyx Security was founded in 2024 by Maxim Bar-Kogan, a veteran of Unit 8200 and former VP of Product and Engineering at Mixtiles, and Gil Elbaz, an AI entrepreneur who served in the Air Force's technological operational unit. The company currently employs more than 80 people in Israel, the USA, and Canada, and is already working with several Fortune 500 companies. In June, Anthropic announced that it had chosen to integrate Onyx's technology to enable organizations to adopt AI solutions securely.
In a conversation with Calcalist, Maxim Bar-Kogan, the company's CEO and one of its founders, says:
"Coming out of stealth mode marked for the company the ability to start selling extensively, and since then the demand has been so great that we met our targets very quickly, which created great interest among investors and the ability to raise the new round faster. The number represents people who believe that our field will create huge companies and will be one of the most important fields in the cyber industry, and funds are willing to bet aggressively on those who claim to be the leader. The investors believe that we will build a real and independent company. This is not a funding round for a company to be sold, but a giant company, and we have momentum."
"I think that AI in general is shuffling the cards in all industries, and every company in the cyber world is in a vulnerable position, and many small companies can surprise. Our field's goal is to control AI. The amounts of money being poured into AI and companies there are worth trillions of dollars. The companies that will help the giant companies will be worth billions," says Maxim Bar-Kogan. "We are dealing with such an acute problem. The world will create companies worth billions in our field that help control AI. There are not many companies that know how to do this at all, to fully control AI agents."
Onyx develops a secure platform that allows organizations to identify, manage, and control the way AI agents are used — whether they are third-party vendor agents or agents developed within the organization by engineering teams. Through the models developed by the company, it is able to monitor every stage of the agent's reasoning process, to identify and correct malicious and unintended actions.
Hila Zigman, Managing Partner at the Cyberstarts fund, which led the seed investment, notes:
"As AI agents become an integral part of critical workflows in organizations, the need increases to ensure that they operate safely, consistently, and in accordance with the organization's policy. Onyx Security is developing the control layer that will allow organizations to adopt AI on a large scale. In our estimation, this is one of the most significant cyber categories that will develop in the coming decade."
