TEL AVIV, Israel | Israeli-founded cybersecurity start-up Cymphony has emerged from stealth with $30 million in financing to tackle one of the newest risks facing businesses adopting artificial intelligence: autonomous AI agents gaining access to sensitive corporate systems without the security controls traditionally applied to human employees.
The New York- and Tel Aviv-based company announced the funding Sept. 9. The total includes a new $25 million Series A co-led by Sequoia Capital and the SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund, following an earlier undisclosed $5 million seed round led by Sequoia.
TechCrunch reported that the Series A valued Cymphony at more than $100 million after the investment.
The company is targeting a cybersecurity problem that barely existed several years ago.
AI agents are increasingly being given the ability to read corporate documents, query databases, access applications, perform tasks, and take actions autonomously. In some cases, those systems can reach the same sensitive information available to employees, or considerably more.
Traditional identity and access-management systems, however, were largely designed around human users.
Cymphony says its platform is intended to give security teams a unified view of both.
Mapping Humans and AI Agents Together
At the center of Cymphonyโs technology is what the company calls a โworkforce security graph.โ
The system maps employees, AI agents, other non-human identities, permissions, applications, sensitive information and activity within a company.
That lets security teams see who, or what, can reach particular information and determine whether an AI agent has been given access it doesn’t actually need.
The issue is becoming increasingly important as businesses connect generative AI tools to internal systems.
For example, an employee might authorize an AI application to search a document repository without realizing the underlying permissions allow it to access confidential legal, financial, or personnel information.
Cymphony CEO and co-founder Shy Dekel described one customer where ChatGPT was connected to SharePoint and, because of existing access permissions, interns could query documents connected to highly sensitive litigation.
Dekel described the situation as an honest mistake rather than malicious activity, but it illustrated the new security challenges created when AI tools inherit access from existing corporate systems.
Israeli Founders From Elite Talpiot Program
Cymphony was founded approximately two years ago by Dekel, Idan Berkovits and Edi Gotlieb.
All three are graduates of Talpiot, Israelโs highly selective military technology and leadership program.
Dekel previously spent nearly six years in Israelโs Unit 8200 intelligence and cybersecurity organization, eventually leading its cyber department.
Berkovits, Cymphonyโs chief product officer, previously led a research group in Israelโs Prime Ministerโs Office and received an Israel Defense Prize.
Gotlieb, the companyโs chief technology officer, previously worked in hardware engineering at Apple and Israelโs Ministry of Defense.
The company currently employs about 24 to 30 people across Israel and the United States, according to recent reports.
Security for a New Kind of Workforce
Cymphony argues that AI agents require a fundamentally different approach to enterprise security because they can operate at machine speed and interact with far more data than an individual employee would normally examine manually.
Its platform brings together several categories of security information.
One component tracks which AI tools employees and agents use and the data they provide.
Another identifies sensitive corporate information that may have been exposed or shared too broadly.
Identity-security capabilities can detect dormant administrator accounts, excessive permissions, or identities without adequate authentication protections.
A threat component monitors activity that could indicate insider risk, including unusually large file downloads or abnormal access patterns.
The company also offers an AI assistant called Maestro that allows security teams to investigate and remediate problems using natural-language instructions.
Cymphony says its system can be deployed without installing software agents on every employee device, potentially simplifying adoption by large enterprises.
Early Enterprise Customers
The start-up already has several major organizations as customers.
They include global investment firm KKR, agricultural technology company Syngenta, Cass Information Systems, and legal operations software company Athennian. Sequoia Capital is also using Cymphony internally.
TechCrunch reported that Cymphony reached a double-digit number of enterprise customers and seven figures in annual recurring revenue during its first year of selling the platform.
For investors, the appeal partly stems from the expectation that autonomous AI agents will become a permanent part of the corporate workforce.
As businesses increasingly deploy AI systems capable of acting rather than merely answering questions, those systems will require identities, permissions and security controls of their own.
That creates a potentially large new cybersecurity market.
Another Israeli Cybersecurity Bet
Cymphonyโs financing also reinforces Israelโs outsized position in global cybersecurity.
Israel has produced a long list of major cybersecurity companies and start-ups, many founded by veterans of elite military intelligence and technology programs.
Cymphony follows that pattern, combining founders from Talpiot with experience in Unit 8200, government research, and major technology companies.
What distinguishes the company is the problem it is attempting to solve.
The cybersecurity industry has spent decades building systems around people, devices, and conventional software.
Autonomous AI agents introduce another category of user: one that can analyze enormous volumes of information, operate continuously, and take action without waiting for direct human instructions.
Cymphony is betting that enterprises will soon need to treat those agents as members of the workforce from a security perspective.
The $30 million investment suggests major venture investors see that transition arriving quickly.
For Israelโs technology sector, Cymphony represents another example of the countryโs cybersecurity expertise moving rapidly into the emerging AI economy, this time by addressing a question companies worldwide are only beginning to confront: who is watching what their AI agents can see and do?
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