Insider Brief
- Apex, an AI security company, announced its emergence from stealth with $7 million in seed funding led by Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures, focusing on safeguarding AI applications and models in business environments.
- The company addresses critical security challenges emerging from the rapid adoption of generative AI across industries, including data leaks, privacy concerns, and AI-driven cyberattacks, emphasizing the need for robust protection measures.
- Founded by former intelligence officers and with expertise from Stanford and Harvard, Apex aims to provide comprehensive visibility and control over AI activities within organizations, offering solutions to securely leverage AI technology while mitigating associated risks.
PRESS RELEASE — TEL AVIV, Israel/May 2, 2024 (Newswire.com) — Apex, the leader in AI security, announced today that it emerged from stealth with $7 million in seed funding. The round was co-led by Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures, with participation from notable angel investors.
Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, there has been an exponential rise in the adoption of Generative AI capabilities across all industries in the world. Effectively, GenAI is becoming the core of every company, as 80% of Fortune 500 companies already have employees using ChatGPT for work. However, this rapid uptake of AI applications brings forth a range of security challenges for businesses, including potential data leaks, the risk of malicious data injection into organizational systems, concerns related to privacy and copyright infringements, as well as the looming threat of sophisticated AI-driven cyberattacks. While embracing AI practices swiftly is essential for organizations aiming to stay ahead in a competitive landscape, it also requires them to navigate effectively through evolving security threats. Companies are now tasked with finding the delicate balance between fostering innovation and ensuring robust protection measures are in place to safeguard against these potential risks.
“Apex was founded with the mission of empowering security and AI teams to enable the secure and swift AI adoption within world-class organizations,” said Matan Derman, Co-Founder and CEO at Apex. “During the company’s founding, we consulted with dozens of executives to understand their needs and discovered a reluctance to adopt advanced AI due to security concerns. Apex is positioned to change all that, playing a key role in helping organizations secure AI models and applications and enabling them to leverage the power of AI safely.”
Apex built a security platform that provides organizations with comprehensive visibility of their AI activity, allowing them to define how AI is used across the organization and enforce security policies accordingly. The platform can detect violations to a company’s or industry security standards, detect and respond to AI attacks, so that companies can securely leverage cutting-edge AI technologies. Apex adds a crucial security layer to AI models, applications and large language models (LLMs); the platform includes a secure portal for a productive and secure interaction with all the organization’s AI platforms.
The company was founded in 2023 by Matan Derman (CEO) and Tomer Avni (CPO), who met at the elite intelligence unit 8200, where they served as distinguished officers at the ranks of Lieutenant Colonel and Captain. Both hold Master’s degrees from Stanford and Harvard, respectively. Apex already caters to various Fortune 500 companies as clients and plans to use the seed funding to accelerate product development, employee recruitment, and go-to-market efforts.
“Every wave of disruptive innovation introduces new security threats and attack vectors, and generative AI is no exception. The world is elated by the possibility for Gen AI to increase productivity, and even create new markets, But at the same time, awareness is building that sensitive data can leave the corporate perimeter, and that Gen AI outputs are manipulated. Therefore the adoption of this new generation of AI services needs to go hand in hand with building out the infrastructure to securely use them,” said Bogomil Balkansky, Partner at Sequoia Capital. “We are proud to partner with Matan and Tomer, and we are excited to see Apex Security quickly emerging as the leader in generative AI security. ”
“Every wave of new technology, while exciting, introduces multiple security threats requiring a fresh approach. As companies start using AI and large language models, they expose themselves to new risks, including data leaks, privacy, intellectual property breaches, or dedicated AI attacks,” said Shardul Shah, Partner at Index Ventures. “Apex is focused on resolving this particular dilemma — one of the biggest cybersecurity challenges facing today’s tech industry — using an innovative framework that actively mitigates AI risks on a large scale.”
About Apex
Apex is a leading AI security platform designed to empower organizations to adapt to the AI era, which is developing at a whirlwind pace. Apex offers a security platform that gives organizations a complete picture of their AI activity, allowing them to use these tools freely and gain an advantage while avoiding data leaks, malicious data injection, privacy and legal violations, and AI cyberattacks. For more details visit apexhq.ai
Featured image: Credit: Ben Hakim
