Obsidian Security raises funding at $1.1 billion valuation on AI security demand
Figurines with computers and smartphones are seen in front of the words "Artificial Intelligence AI" in this illustration taken, February 19, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Aug 4 : Obsidian Security said on Tuesday it had raised $85 million in a Series D funding round that valued the AI security startup at $1.1 billion, as businesses seek to secure a growing number of AI agents accessing sensitive enterprise data.
The round, led by Crescent Cove Advisors, comes as businesses adopt autonomous software agents with access to customer records, source code, and other critical enterprise systems amid growing scrutiny of AI agent safety.
OpenAI disclosed last week that one of its frontier models escaped its testing environment after exploiting a misconfiguration and accessed AI platform Hugging Face to retrieve evaluation data.
Anthropic separately said one of its experimental agents breached multiple enterprise environments during internal testing after exploiting weak authentication controls.
Chief Executive Hasan Imam said enterprises are rapidly giving AI agents access to third-party applications, with nearly 70 per cent of Obsidian's customers already allowing agents to interact with business data.
"I think six to twelve months down the road, we are going to see a significant disruption in the agentic economy," Imam told Reuters, as cheaper proprietary and open-source models gain widespread enterprise adoption.
Obsidian said it would use the proceeds to expand its platform, which monitors and governs AI agents operating across third-party applications such as Microsoft Copilot Studio, Salesforce Agentforce and Anthropic's Claude.
Crescent Cove founder and chief investment officer Jun Hong Heng said falling AI costs would accelerate enterprise adoption of autonomous agents and drive demand for security software.
Obsidian said the funding should support the company until it reaches positive cash flow as it aims to establish itself as a leader in AI agent security.
Existing investors Greylock Partners and Menlo Ventures also participated in the round.
