Still wondering what this AI does? The Israeli company already turned it into a $12 billion business

Big funding round for the Israeli company Cyera, which has raised $600 million at a valuation of $12 billion. The company develops a platform that helps organizations monitor what their artificial intelligence systems are doing. Its customers include Paramount, Chipotle and Docusign.

The Israeli startup Cyera announced on Wednesday that it has completed a $600 million funding round at a valuation of $12 billion, four times its valuation in its last round about a year and a half ago. The company develops a platform that allows organizations to monitor what their AI systems are doing and what information they access, a field that has become one of the central challenges in implementing AI in large companies.

The problem Cyera aims to solve is one that anyone using AI at work is familiar with, who is actually monitoring what AI is doing? According to the company, about 68% of organizations are unable to distinguish between an employee’s action and an AI agent’s action within their systems. That means they do not know which documents the AI is accessing, what decisions it is making, or what it might leak.

"Trust begins with a clear understanding of what AI systems can see and what they are capable of doing. This was a foundational layer that organizations lacked," said Yotam Segev, co-founder and CEO of Cyera. He said the current funding is intended to accelerate the development of the platform and expand the company’s operations into additional markets.

Cyera has raised more than $2.3 billion since it was founded. The company employs more than 1,500 people in 18 countries. It says its annual recurring revenue, ARR, has tripled every year for three consecutive years. Over the past year and a half, Cyera completed five acquisitions, including Ryft and Genie. Its customers include Paramount, Chipotle and Docusign.

The company’s growth illustrates the ability of Israeli high tech to benefit from the development of AI technology without building models itself. The success of companies of this kind, which provide services to companies using artificial intelligence, points to a possible path for startups that want to grow in the AI world by serving customers of giants such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic without competing with them.

The current funding round was led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from the Israeli cyber fund Cyberstarts and the Singaporean investment fund Temasek. Existing investors who took part in the round include Sequoia, Blackstone, Accel and Coatue.