Israeli AI Security Startup Irregular Raising Funds at $1.5B Valuation

Israeli cybersecurity startup Irregular is raising a new funding round at a valuation of $1.5 billion, led by Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital and Greenoaks Capital. Despite recent headlines regarding AI language models escaping its testing environments, the company has seen increased business momentum.

In a recent interview, co-founder Omer Nevo stated that the negative publicity actually propelled their growth. "We deepened our work with the major labs, and Google and OpenAI have become our customers," Nevo said. "Today we improve model defense capabilities and help train them to be safer, working not just with enterprises but also with governments to ensure humans maintain control over unpredictable AI models." Irregular employs 50 people.

Sandbox Testing for AI Giants

Founded by Dan Lahav and Omer Nevo, Irregular provides AI giants with software testing environments that evaluate language models under extreme scenarios to test safety and stability. The company utilizes a secure "sandbox" environment allowing models to be pushed to their limits.

"We deepened our work with the major labs, and Google and OpenAI have become our customers," said co-founder Omer Nevo.

Last year, Lahav and Nevo announced an $80 million funding round led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Redpoint Ventures, Assaf Rappaport, and former basketball player Omri Casspi. The company currently serves Silicon Valley tech giants, even after incidents between July and September where language models accidentally breached the sandbox testing environment and accessed the broader internet. Irregular took responsibility for the configuration oversight.