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- Protect AI
Protect AI Acquisition, Valuation, Funding & Investors
Protect AI was acquired by Palo Alto Networks for $700M in April 2025.
Cumulative funding Protect AI raised
$109M
across 3 funding rounds
Key investors in Protect AI
boldstart ventures
Pelion Venture Partners
Acrew Capital
Knollwood Capital
Salesforce Ventures
Evolution Equity Partners
StepStone Group
01 Advisors
About Protect AI
Protect AI is a US-headquartered platform for securing machine learning models and AI pipelines. The company provides ML Bill-of-Materials scanning, LLM vulnerability testing, and red-teaming tools integrated with GitHub and Kubernetes. Protect AI serves enterprises like Fortune 500 firms adopting MLSecOps, with runtime monitoring for model poisoning and data exfiltration risks.
Founded
2022
HQ
Website
Status
Acquired
Customer focus
B2B
Revenue model
Subscription
Valuation
$400M (Aug 2024)
Protect AI Acquisition
Protect AI was acquired by Palo Alto Networks for $700M on 28 April 2025.
Before the acquisition Protect AI had raised $109M across 3 funding rounds.
Palo Alto Networks, the global cybersecurity leader (NASDAQ: PANW), announced on April 28, 2025, its intent to acquire Protect AI, a Seattle-based startup founded in 2022 specializing in securing AI and machine learning applications and models by monitoring layers and components of ML systems, including model scanning, posture management, AI red teaming, runtime protection, and AI agent security. Protect AI, with around 120 employees across Seattle, Berlin, and Bangalore, had raised a $60 million Series B in 2024 at a $400 million valuation and previously acquired Laiyer AI, SydeLabs, Rebuff, and Huntr; sources indicated the deal valued it north of $500 million, with terms undisclosed and closure expected later in 2025. The strategic rationale centers on addressing the dynamic attack surface from AI proliferation, which traditional security cannot handle, by integrating Protect AI's solutions into Palo Alto Networks' Prisma AIRS, the industry's most comprehensive AI security platform launched concurrently, enabling end-to-end protection from development to runtime across sectors like finance, government, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail. Palo Alto Networks completed the acquisition on July 22, 2025, accelerating its leadership in next-generation cybersecurity for AI-driven infrastructure. Protect AI's technology and team enhance Prisma AIRS with capabilities for securing complex AI ecosystems of models, applications, and agents, meeting enterprise demands for holistic risk management in regulated and high-stakes environments. Protect AI CEO Ian Swanson joined as VP of Product for Prisma AIRS, with founders and employees transitioning; Anand Oswal, SVP and GM of Network Security at Palo Alto Networks, emphasized scaling depth and breadth in AI security, while Swanson highlighted exponential acceleration of their vision for secure, safe, and trustworthy AI via Palo Alto's global reach and expertise.
| Acquirer | Date | Type | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Apr 2025 | Strategic M&A | $700M |
Protect AI Valuation
Protect AI is currently valued at $400M, based on its Series B in August 2024.
The $60M round was led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from Acrew Capital, Samsung, Salesforce Ventures, StepStone Group, Knollwood Capital and 3 other investors.
Protect AI valuation by funding round
| Date | Stage | Valuation |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 2024 | Series B | $400M |
Protect AI Funding History
Protect AI has raised a total of $109M across 3 funding rounds.
Protect AI's first fundraising round was a $14M seed round in December 2022. The most recent completed round was a $60M Series B in August 2024.
Protect AI funding rounds
| Date | Stage | Investors | Raised | Valuation | Deal Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2024 | Series B | Evolution Equity Partners (lead); Acrew Capital; Samsung; Salesforce Ventures; StepStone Group; Knollwood Capital; boldstart ventures; 01 Advisors; Pelion Venture Partners | $60M | $400M | Protect AI is a Seattle-based cybersecurity company specializing in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) security, offering the AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM) platform that provides end-to-end protection for ML models, large language models (LLMs), AI applications, and supply chains against unique vulnerabilities and threats. The platform includes scanning for threats in ML models, GenAI security tools, AI/ML bill of materials, threat feeds, observability, governance, and supports open-source vulnerability identification through its Huntr community with over 15,000 members. It serves national security organizations, Fortune 500 companies, and other public and private sector clients, with offices in Seattle, Berlin, and Bangalore. On August 1, 2024, Protect AI closed a $60 million Series B funding round led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from 01 Advisors, StepStone Group, Samsung, and existing investors Acrew Capital, boldstart ventures, Knollwood Capital, Pelion Venture Partners, and Salesforce Ventures, bringing total funding to $108.5 million following a prior $35 million Series A. The proceeds will enhance the AI-SPM platform's innovation, expand customer success and sales teams, advance R&D, strengthen channel programs, and support 300% year-over-year team growth by hiring 50 more specialists, reaching around 125 employees. The company positions itself as the leader in AI security, addressing gaps not covered by traditional providers amid rapid AI adoption across industries. Protect AI has acquired Rebuff and Huntr, growing its platform from one to five products in under a year. CEO Ian Swanson emphasized extending technology leadership across the AI development lifecycle to build a safer AI-powered world, with trust from high-profile customers driving market leadership in the emerging AI security category. |
| Jul 2023 | Series A | Evolution Equity Partners (lead); Acrew Capital; Salesforce Ventures; Knollwood Capital; boldstart ventures; Pelion Venture Partners | $35M | - | Protect AI, founded in 2022 by former AWS and Oracle employees including CEO Ian Swanson, develops security tools for AI and machine learning systems. Its platform, AI Radar, provides visibility into ML environments by generating a machine learning bill of materials (MLBOM), detecting vulnerabilities, threats, data leakages, model poisoning, and integrating with CI/CD tools. Additional products like NB Defense secure Jupyter Notebooks against ransomware and mining attacks, while addressing prompt injection and other AI-specific risks. On July 26 or 27, 2023, Protect AI raised $35 million in a Series A round led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from Salesforce Ventures and existing investors Acrew Capital, boldstart ventures, Knollwood Capital, and Pelion Venture Partners. This doubled the size of its prior seed round from December 2022, bringing total funding to $48.5 million at that time. Proceeds were allocated to platform enhancements, R&D, sales and marketing, go-to-market activities, and customer success. The company targets organizations facing AI security blindspots in the ML supply chain, including regulatory compliance, PII leakages, data manipulation, and infrastructure protection. Later developments include a Series B in August 2024 at $400M valuation, acquisitions like SydeLabs in July 2024, and an acquisition of Protect AI itself on April 28, 2025, with total funding reaching $108.5M over five rounds. |
| Dec 2022 | Seed | Acrew Capital (lead); boldstart ventures (lead); Shlomo Kramer; Nir Polak; Knollwood Capital; Dimitri Sirota; Aviso Ventures; Pelion Venture Partners | $14M | - | Protect AI is a Seattle-based cybersecurity company focused on securing artificial intelligence and machine learning systems, creating the MLSecOps category to help enterprises secure and govern AI/ML models and applications. It launched its first product, NB Defense, a free security solution for vulnerabilities in Jupyter Notebooks at the start of the ML supply chain. The company emerged from stealth with 15 employees and offices in Dallas and Raleigh. On December 15, 2022, Protect AI raised $13.5 million in a seed round co-led by Acrew Capital and boldstart ventures, with participation from Knollwood Capital, Pelion Venture Partners, Aviso Ventures, and cybersecurity leaders Shlomo Kramer, Nir Polak, and Dimitri Sirota. The funding supports product development, customer outreach, hiring in engineering, security, and go-to-market roles, and advancing MLSecOps. Mark Kraynak and Ed Sim joined the board. At the time, Protect AI was pre-revenue but had secured Fortune 500 enterprise customers across finance, healthcare, life sciences, energy, gaming, digital businesses, and fintech. The company positioned itself in a market with few direct competitors, such as Resistant AI. |
Who has invested in Protect AI?
13 investors have backed Protect AI across its funding rounds, including boldstart ventures, Pelion Venture Partners, Acrew Capital, Knollwood Capital, Salesforce Ventures and Evolution Equity Partners.
Lead investors include Evolution Equity Partners, Acrew Capital and boldstart ventures.
Protect AI Investors
| Investor | HQ | Rounds | Role | First check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Lead | Dec 2022 | ||
| 3 | Participant | Dec 2022 | ||
| 3 | Lead | Dec 2022 | ||
| 3 | Participant | Dec 2022 | ||
| 2 | Participant | Jul 2023 | ||
| 2 | Lead | Jul 2023 | ||
| 1 | Participant | Aug 2024 | ||
| 1 | Participant | Aug 2024 | ||
| 1 | Participant | Dec 2022 | ||
| 1 | Participant | Dec 2022 | ||
| 1 | Participant | Dec 2022 | ||
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all 13 Protect AI investors. Start Free Trial | ||||
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Start Free TrialAcquisitions by Protect AI
Protect AI has acquired 3 companies to date.
Last acquisition by Protect AI was on July 31st 2024. Protect AI acquired SydeLabs for undisclosed valuation.
Latest Acquisitions by Protect AI
| Description | SydeLabs is a security firm protecting AI systems through vulnerability scanning, adversarial testing, and runtime monitoring tools. | Laiyer.AI is a developer of security solutions that protect large language model interactions from prompt injection and data leakage risks. The platform scans inputs and outputs in real-time, enforces policies, and integrates with frameworks like LangChain and LlamaIndex. San Francisco-headquartered, it serves AI developers building enterprise applications in customer service, code generation, and content moderation. | huntr is a vulnerability disclosure platform focused on identifying and mitigating security risks in AI/ML open-source software, foundational models, and machine learning infrastructure. The service enables security researchers to report flaws in critical packages such as PyTorch and TensorFlow through coordinated disclosure processes. huntr collaborates with major AI organizations including Hugging Face and Meta to strengthen the security of shared models and datasets. Launched in 2023, the platform operates from the United States and maintains a public leaderboard tracking disclosed vulnerabilities across npm, PyPI, and other repositories. |
| HQ Country | |||
| HQ City | San Francisco, CA | Berlin | Seattle, WA |
| Deal Date | 31 Jul 2024 | 31 Jan 2024 | 8 Aug 2023 |
| Valuation | undisclosed | undisclosed | undisclosed |
| EV/Revenue | |||
| EV/EBITDA | |||
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all Protect AI acquisitions and their M&A valuation multiples. Start Free Trial | |||
Protect AI Competitors
Protect AI competitors include listed companies like PKSHA Technology and Hanwang Technology Co, and private ones like Exaforce, Onyx Security, Doppel and Pindrop.
| Company | HQ | Status | Revenue | EBITDA | Valuation | Revenue Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Private | - | - | $725M | - | ||
| Private | - | - | $640M | - | ||
| Private | - | - | $600M | - | ||
| Private | - | - | $977M | - | ||
| Publicly listed | $140M | $47M | $627M | 2.4x | ||
| Publicly listed | $282M | ($14M) | $605M | - |
Protect AI Public Comps
Protect AI is no longer listed, but its public comps include Shenzhen Sunwin, Feitian Technologies, Horizon Quantum, OneSpan, CANCOM, Beijing Deep Glint Tech, DBAPPSecurity, Aura.com, PKSHA Technology and Mitek Systems.
| Last FY | EV/Revenue | EV/EBITDA | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | EBITDA | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | |
| $20M | ($147M) | 37.7x | - | (5.0x) | - | |||
| $104M | ($4K) | 6.2x | - | (168378.6x) | - | |||
| $269K | ($5M) | 2287.8x | - | (125.2x) | (33.0x) | |||
| $243M | $57M | 2.6x | 2.5x | 11.0x | 8.9x | |||
| $2B | $118M | 0.4x | 0.4x | 6.3x | 5.7x | |||
| $23M | ($29M) | 25.1x | 8.7x | (19.8x) | (80.2x) | |||
| $321M | $15M | 1.8x | 1.8x | 38.5x | 21.1x | |||
| $193M | ($155M) | 5.7x | - | (7.0x) | - | |||
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all Protect AI competitors and their valuation data. Start Free Trial | ||||||||
Common questions about Protect AI
| When was Protect AI founded? | Protect AI was founded in 2022. |
| Where is Protect AI headquartered? | Protect AI is headquartered in Seattle, WA, United States. |
| Is Protect AI publicly listed? | No, Protect AI was acquired by Palo Alto Networks in April 2025. |
| Who acquired Protect AI? | Protect AI was acquired by Palo Alto Networks in April 2025. |
| How much was Protect AI acquired for? | Protect AI was acquired for $700M in April 2025. |
| What is Protect AI's valuation? | Protect AI was last valued at $400M in its Series B in August 2024. |
| How much funding has Protect AI raised? | Protect AI has raised $109M across 3 funding rounds. |
| What was Protect AI's last funding round? | Protect AI's last funding round was a $60M Series B in August 2024, led by Evolution Equity Partners. |
| Who are Protect AI's investors? | Protect AI's investors include Acrew Capital, Knollwood Capital, boldstart ventures, Pelion Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Evolution Equity Partners, Samsung, StepStone Group, Shlomo Kramer, Nir Polak and 3 others. |
| Which companies are comparable to Protect AI? | Companies comparable to Protect AI include Exaforce, Onyx Security, Doppel, Pindrop, PKSHA Technology and Hanwang Technology Co. |
| How many companies has Protect AI acquired? | Protect AI has acquired 3 companies, including SydeLabs, Laiyer.AI and huntr. |
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