HiddenLayer raises $100 million in Series B funding round. HiddenLayer's $100 million Series B positions the Austin-based AI security company as a leading pure play provider securing agentic, generative, and predictive AI systems amid surging enterprise demand. HiddenLayer's recent $100M round was led by Delta-v Capital, with participation from Ten Eleven Ventures, Morgan Stanley, M12 (Microsoft's venture fund), and Booz Allen Ventures. This brings HiddenLayer's total capital raised to approximately $156 million. Prior rounds included a roughly $6 million seed in 2022 and a $50 million Series A in September 2023 (co-led by M12 and Moore Strategic Ventures). Secondary market data places a post money valuation in the range of roughly $383-387 million. The company, founded in 2022 by Chris "Tito" Sestito (CEO) and co-founders including security and AI veterans, employs around 175 people. How will HiddenLayer use the funds? Funds will deepen the enterprise platform with emphasis on Agentic Runtime Security (real time visibility into agent behavior in production, detecting and blocking manipulation, tool misuse, and unauthorized actions) and the new Agent Harness Security solution, which extends runtime protection to autonomous coding agents that write, review, and ship code with reduced human oversight. Additional priorities include sales and distribution expansion, engineering and research growth, channel relationships, leadership hires (including recent Chief Revenue Officer Mike Gesnaldo), and international expansion starting in Europe and the broader EMEA region. Annual recurring revenue (ARR) grew more than 10x over the past year and now sits in the "tens of millions" of dollars, with over 90% of that growth driven by new customers. The company added more than 50 new platform customers across securities brokerage, banking, insurance, accounting, government, technology, IT services, pharmaceuticals, and airlines. International wins include one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies plus premium automotive and food and beverage brands. It also supports a leading frontier model provider securing systems used by more than 700 million weekly users. HiddenLayer's platform covers the full AI lifecycle: discovery and inventory of AI assets, supply chain and model scanning (detecting risks in third party and proprietary models without requiring access to raw training data or model weights), red teaming/attack simulation, guardrails, and runtime protection including an AI firewall. A key differentiator is its non invasive approach that works without accessing sensitive data or proprietary model internals, valuable for regulated industries and federal customers. Research underpins the product: 39 granted patents and 65 pending spanning adversarial detection, model protection, and threat analysis; development of the first comprehensive Adversarial Prompt Engineering taxonomy; and ongoing vulnerability disclosures across foundation models, agents, and supporting tools. The team contributes to CISA/JCDC, MITRE, NIST, OWASP, and OpenSSF. Its 2026 AI Threat Landscape Report notes that while 96% of organizations view AI as critical to operations, nearly one third cannot confirm whether they have experienced an AI related breach. Gartner estimates enterprise spending on products to secure AI tools will reach $2.83 billion in 2026 (up 83% from 2025) and nearly $4.78 billion the following year. The round ranks in the 96th percentile of U.S. Series B deals in the AI security space. HiddenLayer competes in a rapidly consolidating category against specialists and broader platforms such as Protect AI, Lakera, Robust Intelligence (now under Cisco), and others focused on model security, runtime guardrails, or supply chain integrity. Large cybersecurity incumbents (Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Check Point) often prefer to acquire rather than build native AI security capabilities. The syndicate blends growth equity (Delta-v), cybersecurity specialists (Ten Eleven), strategic corporate capital (M12, Booz Allen Ventures), and institutional finance (Morgan Stanley). Microsoft's continued participation signals alignment with enterprise AI platforms. Investor commentary highlights the shift from design time principles to continuous runtime assurance as agentic systems become core to enterprise operations, and notes that traditional tools built for code and infrastructure are insufficient against model poisoning, hijacking, or input based manipulation. The raise capitalizes on proven product market fit in high stakes verticals, strong research IP, and the accelerating transition to agentic AI, providing runway to scale sales, product depth in runtime agent protection, and geographic reach while the AI security category matures into a multi billion dollar market. Please email Daily Company your feedback and news tips at hello(at)dailycompanynews.com

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn MoreWith cyberattacks accelerating at machine speed, open-source large language models (LLMs) have quickly become the infrastructure that enables startups and global cybersecurity leaders to develop and deploy adaptive, cost-effective defenses against threats that evolve faster than human analysts can respond.Open-source LLMs’ initial advantages of faster time-to-market, greater adaptability and lower cost have created a scalable, secure foundation for delivering infrastructure. At last week’s RSAC 2025 conference, Cisco, Meta and ProjectDiscovery announced new open-source LLMs and a community-driven attack surface innovation that together define the future of open-source in cybersecurity.One of the key takeaways from this year’s RSAC is the shift in open-source LLMs to extend and strengthen infrastructure at scale.Open-source AI is on the verge of delivering what many cybersecurity leaders have called on for years, which is the ability of the many cybersecurity providers to join forces against increasingly complex threats. The vision of being collaborators in creating a unified, open-source LLM and infrastructure is a step closer, given the announcements at RSAC.Cisco’s Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel emphasized in his keynote, “The true enemy is not our competitor. It is actually the adversary. And we want to make sure that we can provide all kinds of tools and have the ecosystem band together so that we can actually collectively fight the adversary.”Patel explained the urgency of taking on such a complex challenge, saying, “AI is fundamentally changing everything, and cybersecurity is at the heart of it all