Simbian raises $10 million to automate security operations with GenAI
Simbian emerged from stealth mode with oversubscribed $10 million seed funding to deliver on fully autonomous security.
As a first step towards that goal, the company is introducing a GenAI-powered security co-pilot that integrates secure and intelligent AI solutions into diverse IT environments to maximize coverage and expedite resolutions to security teams’ ever-changing needs.
The co-pilot continuously observes user actions and environments, and learns to autonomously perform increasingly sophisticated tasks on its own with time. Simbian is committed to making security fully autonomous by delegating all tactical tasks to its trusted AI platform, allowing users to focus on strategic security goals.
Simbian, the name derived from the symbiotic relationship between humans and AI, has received initial investment from security and AI-focused investors Cota Capital, Icon Ventures, Firebolt and Rain Capital. Its founding team comprises leading AI researchers and security veterans who have created security products in broad use across enterprises today, and have 150+ patents across large language models, cloud computing, encryption, scalable architecture, transistors, and hardware design.
“Traditional approaches to security automation no longer suffice in today’s dynamic environments,” said Cota Capital Partner Aditya Singh. “Talent is getting scarce, and at the same time threat vectors are getting more complex. A fully autonomous security platform presents a big opportunity in the global cybersecurity market which, according to a cybersecurity market report, is to grow to $298.5 billion by 2028. Simbian is a leader in the field, using a deep understanding of the nuance and context of security automation that learns with AI and gets smarter and deeper over time. Simbian’s founding team has a uniquely proven background, having built NVIDIA GPUs, confidential computing, and leading cloud security solutions. We are thrilled to join Simbian in the journey to fully autonomous security.”
In addition, 15 of today’s most successful business leaders back the company, including Olivier Pomel, Co-founder and CEO at Datadog; Pankaj Patel, CEO at Nile; Diogo Monica, co-founder of Anchorage Digital; Joe Sullivan, former CSO at Facebook, Uber and CloudFlare; Bharat Shah, former CVP of Microsoft Security; Suresh Batchu, COO at Seraphic; Paul Albright, Operating Partner at Goldman Sachs; Pierre Lamond, legendary Silicon Valley investor; and Gokul Rajaram, board member at Coinbase and Pinterest.
Simbian’s GenAI-powered platform is a security co-pilot that adapts to diverse IT environments and covers the entire gamut of security functions. Most businesses have a mix of software from multiple vendors and in-house software. Each business and each member of a security team have unique, ever-changing security needs.
Simbian helps every member of the security team from the CISO to the frontline practitioner solve their unique security needs in real-time. Users provide their goal in natural language, and Simbian’s patent-pending LLM-powered platform provides personalized recommendations and generates automated actions across heterogeneous environments – delivering better security outcomes, higher agility to evolving business needs and threats, and lower costs.
“Security is a domain of ever-increasing complexity,” said Sergey Gorbunov, Co-founder at Axelar. “Every day security incidents bring new variables. Simbian is taking a big step forward towards the mission of a fully autonomous security platform. We are excited to partner with them as it allows us to be strategic in our security goals, leaving the mechanics of security to Simbian.”
While security vendors are increasingly using GenAI, off-the-shelf GenAI models come with many security risks, including hallucinations, prompt injection risks, and exposure of PII and confidential data. Simbian minimizes these risks by leveraging a patent-pending hardened LLM system called TrustedLLM that utilizes multiple layers of security controls between the user and the GenAI models it uses under the hood.
“AI-driven security solutions can greatly improve threat detection, speeding remediation, and reducing complexity,” said Dave Gruber, Principal Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Simbian is bringing this vision to a reality, as they leverage AI to automate many of the more challenging, frequent security tasks performed by all levels of security analysts throughout their day.”
Simbian’s Co-founder and CEO Ambuj Kumar was most recently the Co-founder and CEO at Fortanix, a successful data security company, where he raised $135 million+ and established the Confidential Computing security category. Mr. Kumar previously served as Lead Designer of NVIDIA GPUs and as Chief Architect at Cryptography Research Inc. Simbian’s Co-founder and CTO Alankrit Chona has extensive background in high scale platforms and data engineering from Twitter, and was a founding member of successful startups Afterpay and Spotnana.
“Security teams cannot keep up with the operational tasks they must do each day, despite years of investment in in-house automation and tools to make them more effective – which is why we founded Simbian,” said Ambuj Kumar, Simbian, CEO. “Early feedback and traction in the industry have been extremely positive, and we are excited to launch the company today. A first in the industry, Simbian puts the security operator firmly in charge of security decisions, and we enable the user to interact with products across vendors to get things done. We stand unique in the industry with our ability to generate commands in code using LLM and based on a natural language user interface, and we enable users to craft permutations of the actions we support, all on the fly.”