Tenzai, the AI-native cybersecurity company redefining penetration testing through autonomous, agentic AI, today announced its launch out of stealth with a $75 million seed round, one of the largest known seed rounds in cybersecurity. The round was led by Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures, and Lux Capital, and with participation from Swish Ventures and prominent angel investors.
Modern software development moves faster than security can keep up. Major technology companies report that over 30% of their newly written code is now generated by AI, and enterprises deploy updates to production multiple times per day. Yet penetration testing, the key way to find critical and complex exploitations, still happens only periodically. In many cases this means that applications run in production without being tested, leaving malicious actors the first to test it - exposing blind spots across enterprise software.
“Pentesting hasn’t changed much since I was a pentester in high school some 25 years ago,” said Pavel Gurvich, co-founder and CEO of Tenzai. “Back then the work was episodic and manual. Today, AI allows us to bring elite, nation-grade offensive capabilities at a scale and speed that were previously impossible. In large enterprises with hundreds of applications that change daily, providing real security assurance is only possible with autonomous AI that can find and fix vulnerabilities at enterprise scale. That’s why we built Tenzai - to bring always-on offensive capabilities so organizations can move fast and stay secure.”
Tenzai was founded by cybersecurity veterans Pavel Gurvich, Ariel Zeitlin, Ofri Ziv, Itamar Tal, and Aner Mazur. Gurvich and Zeitlin previously co-founded Guardicore, with Ziv and Tal as part of the company’s founding team. Guardicore was later acquired by Akamai in 2021 for $600 million, one of Akamai’s largest acquisitions to date. Mazur was founding CPO at Snyk. The team has deep offensive cyber experience from their time in military intelligence and in leading security teams. “AI generated code is creating new cybersecurity risks and challenges for enterprises," said Asheem Chandna, Partner at Greylock Partners. "We are excited to partner with the exceptionally talented team at Tenzai, on the mission to build the industry's leading agentic AI penetration testing platform."
With the funding, Tenzai will expand its AI research and security teams, enhance its autonomous offensive capabilities, and grow its go-to-market presence in North America and Europe. Early deployments are already underway with leading enterprises in financial services, healthcare, and technology sectors.
