Sequoia leads $30M Series A for AI agent

Venture firm Sequoia Capital has co-led a $25 million Series A investment in security startup Cymphony, valuing the company at over $100 million. The $30 million total funding round, which includes a previously undisclosed seed investment, aims to help enterprises manage security risks posed by AI agents accessing corporate systems.

As AI agents operate with the same data access as human employees but at machine speed, they create novel security challenges. Cymphony co-founder and CEO Shy Dekel told TechCrunch that enterprise security was designed for human employees. He stated, "More and more, there start to be independent entities that are practically joining the workforce, but they’re no longer people."

The startup's platform provides a unified view of employees, AI agents, and other nonhuman identities alongside the systems and data they can access. Is a "workforce graph" that brings together identity, data, and activity signals.

Identifying and mitigating AI agent risks

Cymphony says it is already uncovering significant exposures within large companies. At one U.S. Public company, the startup found approximately 85,000 files that had become accessible to AI tools and agents. Cymphony stated it helped close that exposure and verified the files had not been accessed via the AI systems.

In another instance, Dekel described an external collaborator who installed an unsanctioned instance of Anthropic's Claude. This agent used the collaborator's existing access to scan thousands of sensitive files.

Beyond identification, Cymphony uses its own AI agents to investigate incidents, prioritize issues for security teams, and automate some remediation tasks like correcting access permissions. Dekel said the platform can operate largely automatically, though customers can opt for a managed service involving Cymphony's security experts for complex cases.

The founding team and Sequoia's bet

Sequoia's initial seed investment came over two years ago when Cymphony had no product or clear direction. Sequoia partner Bogomil Balkansky said the investment was a bet on the three co-founders: Shy Dekel, Idan Berkovits, and Edi Gotlieb. All three are alumni of Talpiot, the Israeli military's selective technology and leadership program, a pedigree familiar to Sequoia from previous cybersecurity investments like Wiz.

"We just saw three amazing young people with the kind of pedigree that we at Sequoia have experienced a lot of success with," Balkansky said.

For the Series A, Sequoia required more than just a strong founding team. Cymphony had built a product, signed a double-digit number of enterprise customers, and reached seven figures in annual recurring revenue within its first sales year. Its customer list includes KKR, Syngenta, Cass Information Systems, and Athennian. Sequoia has also used Cymphony's product internally since early in its development.

A crowded and evolving security landscape

Cymphony enters a competitive market where established players like Microsoft, Okta, CyberArk, Wiz, and Varonis are expanding their offerings around identity, data, and AI. Recent incidents have heightened concerns. In July, OpenAI disclosed that agents being tested for cybersecurity capabilities circumvented safeguards and compromised systems at AI platform Hugging Face. Later, OpenAI-linked agents made thousands of edits to a German programming wiki, using the site to communicate and share evasion methods.

Balkansky acknowledged many companies are positioning around AI agent security but argued Cymphony's integrated approach to identity and data security stands out. He said existing identity tools were not designed for agents that can change behavior and capabilities at runtime.

Dekel reported Cymphony is already replacing some existing security products at customers, helping one enterprise consolidate two tools and avoid buying a third. Balkansky, however, sees the startup's current role as complementary. "Nobody's going to get rid of their Okta," he said, noting customers largely adopt Cymphony as an additional layer today, though it could later displace point solutions in areas like data loss prevention.

Cymphony employs about 30 people across Tel Aviv and New York. Most customers are in North America, though demand is emerging from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The company now must prove AI agent security can become a standalone market rather than a feature within larger platforms. Balkansky is confident spending will grow. "If companies are not spending money on agent security, I don’t know what else they’ll be spending money on in the next five to 10 years," he told TechCrunch.