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Prophet Safety, a startup growing autonomous synthetic intelligence programs for cybersecurity protection, introduced Tuesday it has raised $30 million in Sequence A funding to speed up what its founders describe as a basic shift from human-versus-human to “agent-versus-agent” warfare in cybersecurity.
The Menlo Park-based firm’s funding spherical, led by enterprise capital agency Accel with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, comes as organizations battle with an amazing quantity of safety alerts whereas subtle attackers more and more leverage AI to scale and automate their operations. Prophet’s method represents a marked departure from the “copilot” AI instruments which have dominated the market, as an alternative deploying totally autonomous brokers that may examine and reply to threats with out human intervention.
“Each safety operations group is confronted with a twin mandate of decreasing threat whereas driving operational effectivity,” stated Kamal Shah, Prophet Safety’s co-founder and CEO, in an unique interview with VentureBeat. “Our Agentic AI SOC Platform addresses each challenges by automating guide, repetitive duties in safety operations with velocity, accuracy and explainability.”
The funding announcement coincides with Prophet’s launch of what it calls the business’s most complete Agentic AI SOC Platform, increasing past its preliminary Prophet AI SOC Analyst to incorporate Prophet AI Risk Hunter and Prophet AI Detection Advisor. The platform represents a big evolution from conventional Safety Operations Middle (SOC) automation instruments, which generally depend on inflexible, pre-programmed playbooks.
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Safety groups drowning in 960 each day alerts face unprecedented capability disaster
The cybersecurity business faces a disaster of capability and functionality. Shah, who beforehand served as CEO of container safety firm StackRox earlier than its acquisition by Pink Hat, skilled these challenges firsthand. In response to his observations, organizations obtain a mean of 960 safety alerts each day, with as much as 40% going uninvestigated as a result of useful resource constraints.
“The primary grievance that I see from clients each single day is just too many alerts, too many false positives,” Shah defined. “If you concentrate on the world that we dwell in at the moment, on common, an organization will get 960 alerts a day from all the safety instruments that they’ve of their atmosphere, and 40% of these alerts are ignored as a result of they only don’t have the capability to go and examine all these alerts.”
The issue is compounded by a extreme scarcity of expert cybersecurity professionals. Shah factors to what he calls a crucial expertise hole, noting there are 5 million open positions in cybersecurity globally, making a scenario the place even organizations with price range to rent can’t discover certified personnel.
Prophet’s answer instantly addresses this capability crunch. Over the previous six months, the corporate’s AI SOC Analyst has carried out greater than 1 million autonomous investigations throughout its buyer base, saving an estimated 360,000 hours of investigation time whereas delivering 10 occasions sooner response occasions and decreasing false positives by 96%.
How autonomous AI brokers differ from reactive copilot programs reworking cybersecurity
The excellence between Prophet’s “agentic” AI and the copilot fashions deployed by bigger cybersecurity distributors like CrowdStrike, Microsoft, and Sentinel One is prime to understanding the corporate’s worth proposition. Conventional copilot programs require human analysts to provoke queries and interpret responses, basically serving as subtle search interfaces for safety knowledge.
“Copilot is reactive,” Shah defined. “You might have an alert are available in and a safety analyst has to go and write questions, ask the query to say, hey, what does this imply? And it’s important to know what inquiries to ask. The analyst continues to be within the loop for each single alert that is available in as a result of they’re interacting with it.”
In contrast, Prophet’s agentic AI proactively initiates investigations the second an alert is triggered, autonomously gathering proof, reasoning by way of the info, and reaching conclusions with out human intervention. The system paperwork each step of its investigation course of, creating an audit path that permits safety groups to grasp and confirm its reasoning.
“What Prophet AI is ready to do is instantly, as soon as an alert is triggered, it proactively goes and completes the investigation,” Shah stated. “Inside a matter of minutes, your investigation is full and it is aware of what inquiries to ask, and it’s been educated to behave like an skilled analyst.”
Constructing enterprise belief by way of clear AI decision-making and knowledge safety
Prophet’s system leverages a number of frontier AI fashions, together with choices from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others, choosing probably the most acceptable mannequin for every particular process. The corporate has constructed what Shah describes as an “evals framework” to make sure accuracy, repeatability, and consistency whereas stopping AI hallucinations—a crucial concern in safety contexts the place false data can result in inappropriate responses.
“In safety, you’re in a belief constructing train with the safety groups, and in case you hallucinate, you’re going to lose belief and so they’re not going to make use of your product,” Shah emphasised. The corporate employs a retrieval-augmented technology (RAG) structure mixed with rigorous analysis processes to keep up what Shah calls “a excessive bar for safety groups.”
Information privateness and safety symbolize paramount issues for Prophet’s enterprise clients. The corporate employs a single-tenant structure guaranteeing buyer knowledge stays remoted, and maintains contractual agreements with AI mannequin suppliers stopping buyer knowledge from getting used to coach or fine-tune fashions.
Early clients report dramatic effectivity good points as AI handles hundreds of safety alerts
Prophet’s buyer base consists of Docker, which offered a testimonial for the funding announcement. Tushar Jain, Docker’s EVP of Engineering and Product, famous that “Prophet AI is already serving to streamline elements of our safety workflow, and we’re simply getting began. With the latest launch of Risk Hunter and rising integration with our programs, we see a transparent path to sooner response occasions, lowered noise, and a extra targeted safety group.”
The corporate has additionally revealed case research demonstrating dramatic enhancements in SOC effectivity. Eric Wille, CISO at Cupboard Works, reported decreasing his group’s alert quantity from 33,200 down to only six alerts requiring human consideration, successfully permitting his small group to function with the effectivity of a a lot bigger group.
“Prophet AI lower our alert queue from hundreds to dozens,” Wille stated in a video testimonial. “It’s a drive multiplier that removes investigation bottlenecks, improves analyst focus, and helps us reply to actual threats sooner.”
Rising cyber threats and evolving assault strategies drive demand for AI-powered protection
Prophet’s emergence happens in opposition to a backdrop of quickly evolving cyber threats. CrowdStrike’s 2025 World Risk Report documented a 150% improve in China-nexus cyber exercise and a 442% development in voice phishing operations, whereas noting that 79% of detected threats had been malware-free, making them more durable to determine by way of conventional signature-based detection strategies.
The corporate’s method to integration throughout present safety instruments offers a key aggressive benefit. Slightly than requiring organizations to interchange their present safety stack, Prophet integrates with present Safety Data and Occasion Administration (SIEM) programs, Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) platforms, and different safety instruments.
“If you happen to’ve bought to go get 5 – 6 totally different copilots to make use of inside your group, it’s going to be very complicated,” Shah defined. “What clients are telling us is that, hey, I need an impartial AI SOC platform that may assist me triage, examine and reply to alerts from all of my safety instruments, not only one or two.”
Accel’s preemptive funding indicators rising confidence in autonomous safety programs
Eric Wolford, Accomplice at Accel, emphasised the mixture of technical innovation and confirmed market traction that drove the funding resolution. “What stood out to us about Prophet wasn’t simply the technical ambition, however the real-world traction: they’re delivering autonomy and velocity whereas exhibiting their work—a crucial differentiator in an business that runs on belief,” Wolford stated in an announcement.
Accel’s cybersecurity funding portfolio consists of CrowdStrike, Tenable, and BlackPoint Cyber, offering the agency with deep experience in evaluating safety applied sciences. The preemptive nature of the funding spherical — Prophet was not actively looking for capital — underscores investor confidence within the firm’s trajectory.
The funding will primarily help engineering growth and go-to-market acceleration as Prophet scales its platform capabilities. The corporate plans to proceed increasing its agentic AI platform, doubtlessly including new modules for added safety operations workflows.
Business consultants predict widespread adoption of AI brokers will reshape cybersecurity panorama
Prophet’s success displays broader developments reshaping cybersecurity. Deloitte’s 2025 cybersecurity forecasts predict widespread adoption of agentic AI programs, with 40% of enormous enterprises anticipated to deploy such programs of their SOCs by 2025. The consulting agency characterizes this shift as shifting from “automation that follows directions to automation that thinks.”
The corporate’s “function elevation” philosophy — enhancing somewhat than changing human analysts — addresses issues about AI displacing cybersecurity professionals. Shah emphasised that automation ought to free analysts from repetitive duties to concentrate on higher-value safety work.
“This isn’t about eliminating jobs,” Shah stated. “It’s about guaranteeing an analyst doesn’t need to spend time triaging and investigating alerts, as a result of who desires to try this all day, day by day? As a substitute, they’ll concentrate on the 4% of points that actually matter to a corporation. They’re advancing their careers and doing extra higher-order safety work.”
As cyber threats proceed evolving and incorporating AI capabilities, the arms race between attackers and defenders more and more depends on technological sophistication somewhat than human capability alone. Prophet’s method suggests a future the place cybersecurity turns into primarily a contest between AI programs, with human experience targeted on strategic oversight and sophisticated decision-making.
The corporate’s skill to reveal measurable enhancements in SOC effectivity whereas sustaining transparency and explainability positions it to seize market share as organizations grapple with the twin pressures of accelerating threats and protracted expertise shortages. With the brand new funding, Prophet Safety goals to speed up this transition, doubtlessly setting the usual for a way organizations defend in opposition to AI-powered assaults in an period the place the velocity and scale of threats exceed human capability to reply manually.
However maybe probably the most telling indicator of this shift isn’t Prophet’s expertise or funding — it’s what occurred when Shah’s group wasn’t actively looking for funding. Accel approached them anyway, recognizing that in a world the place attackers launch AI-powered assaults at machine velocity, the previous playbook of human-driven protection isn’t simply inadequate — it’s out of date.
