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Prophet Security, a startup developing autonomous artificial intelligence systems for cybersecurity defense, announced Tuesday it has raised $30 million in Series A funding to accelerate what its founders describe as a fundamental shift from human-versus-human to “agent-versus-agent” warfare in cybersecurity.
The Menlo Park-based company’s funding round, led by venture capital firm Accel with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, comes as organizations struggle with an overwhelming volume of security alerts while sophisticated attackers increasingly leverage AI to scale and automate their operations. Prophet’s approach represents a marked departure from the “copilot” AI tools that have dominated the market, instead deploying fully autonomous agents that can investigate and respond to threats without human intervention.
“Every security operations team is faced with a dual mandate of reducing risk while driving operational efficiency,” said Kamal Shah, Prophet Security’s co-founder and CEO, in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. “Our Agentic AI SOC Platform addresses both challenges by automating manual, repetitive tasks in security operations with speed, accuracy and explainability.”
The funding announcement coincides with Prophet’s launch of what it calls the industry’s most comprehensive Agentic AI SOC Platform, expanding beyond its initial Prophet AI SOC Analyst to include Prophet AI Threat Hunter and Prophet AI Detection Advisor. The platform represents a significant evolution from traditional Security Operations Center (SOC) automation tools, which typically rely on rigid, pre-programmed playbooks.
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Security teams drowning in 960 daily alerts face unprecedented capacity crisis
The cybersecurity industry faces a crisis of capacity and capability. Shah, who previously served as CEO of container security company StackRox before its acquisition by Red Hat, experienced these challenges firsthand. According to his observations, organizations receive an average of 960 security alerts daily, with up to 40% going uninvestigated due to resource constraints.
“The number one complaint that I see from customers every single day is too many alerts, too many false positives,” Shah explained. “If you think about the world that we live in today, on average, a company gets 960 alerts a day from all the security tools that they have in their environment, and 40% of those alerts are ignored because they just don’t have the capacity to go and investigate all those alerts.”
The problem is compounded by a severe shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals. Shah points to what he calls a critical talent gap, noting there are 5 million open positions in cybersecurity globally, creating a situation where even organizations with budget to hire cannot find qualified personnel.
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