Zenity founders Ben Kliger (l) and Michael Bargury, both past Microsoft managers.
AI security firm Zenity has announced the closing of a $125 million Series C led by Norwest Venture Partners, as the New York startup plans a global expansion to meet what it calls “skyrocketing” enterprise demand for AI agent security. New investors in the round included Qumra Capital, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Hitachi Ventures and LG Technology Ventures, while existing investors Vertex Ventures, Third Point Ventures, DTCP and Intel Capital participated.
Former Microsoft managers Ben Kliger and Michael Bargury, both members of Israel Defense Forces’ Unit 8200, founded Zenity in 2021 with the conviction that cybersecurity needs a new approach, even though software development itself does not.
Today’s challenge is fundamentally different, the founders say, because AI agents can access critical systems and data, invoke tools, make decisions and take action. This requires a security approach built for increasingly autonomous agents, a reason why the company built an AI security and governance platform that has been purpose-built for AI agents.
The company started by offering a low-code or no-code platform for security governance, before providing full support for securing enterprise AI co-pilots in 2023. It has since evolved to support Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise, and Gemini, through coding agents like Claude, Codex and Cursor, to custom-built agentic systems in AWS Bedrock and AgentCore, Microsoft Foundry and Google Vertex AI.
“AI agents change everything in the way that we all work and operate as enterprises are promoting agentic AI in SaaS, on local devices with coding agents and agentic browsers and in their public cloud infrastructure. They are rebuilding their infrastructure with agentic infrastructure and employees that access enterprise data, tools, and own business processes and decisions,” said Kliger, Zenity’s CEO who at Microsoft worked on Azure security.
“AI experimentation is long over and any organization on the planet is promoting AI agents at velocity and adoption rates never seen before in any tech wave,” he added.
Zenity says it has tripled revenue in each of the past two years and is on track to triple revenue again this year. It has more than 230 employees worldwide, with an R&D center in Tel Aviv, and go-to-market and operations led from New York. The company plans to use the new capital for innovation, as well as global expansion across Europe and Asia Pacific.
“We have followed Zenity’s journey for years and have been impressed by the team’s vision and execution. As enterprises rapidly adopt AI agents across critical workflows, organizations need a new approach to security built for this new and continuously evolving reality,” said Assaf Harel, partner at Norwest. “Zenity has an early mover advantage in building an end-to-end AI agent security.”
Founded in 1961, Menlo Park, Calif.-based Norwest has made more than 1,200 portfolio investments, focusing on technology, information services, business services, financial services, enterprise, healthcare, life science, and consumer products and services sectors. Its recent investments include Raghuvamsi, Veriqus, HMM Deutschland, iTrain Legal and Aizome.
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