A battle-tested founder tackles security for AI

Satyam Sinha, a seasoned entrepreneur and the VP of Engineering at Palo Alto Networks, had been learning about generative AI for months. Last April he was sitting through a presentation about how to reinvent Palo Alto Networks for the AI era when he had an epiphany: Generative AI is here to stay, and a lot of disruptions are about to happen. “I’m going to invent things,” Satyam recalls thinking, “and I need to be part of this innovation by building a startup.”

Satyam resigned that evening and began sketching out business problems he could tackle with artificial intelligence. “If I don’t put 100 percent of my time into starting a company, I am going to be a bystander,” he says.

He eventually started Acuvity, an AI security company that gives enterprises visibility, governance, and granular controls over employee use of AI apps. Today his company reached a milestone: Satyam and cofounder Antoine Mercadal, who have worked together for more than 8 years, announced a $9M seed funding round led by Foundation Capital, with participation from investors Jonathan Siddharth, (CEO of Foundation Capital portfolio company, Turing), and other angels. Acuvity’s 15-person team will accelerate product development, protecting enterprise companies as they dive headfirst into AI. 

Acuvity tackles a P1 data problem 

AI adoption poses urgent data security problems. Look no further than Samsung’s massive internal data leak (and subsequent ban of AI tools) to see how damaging data exfiltration through AI can be. As AI takes data into a new stratosphere, there’s an opportunity for a company to both govern AI usage and protect the data involved. 

Satyam’s twist on the AI security problem: he found a novel way to use AI models to monitor AI usage, combining elements of classical machine learning with LLMs. Acuvity has plenty of competition in this space. But existing solutions fail to offer comprehensive visibility and control, leaving enterprises vulnerable to breaches and non-compliance issues. Acuvity is designed to enforce safe AI usage policies, monitor confidential data leakage, and ensure compliance.

When Satyam began looking for funding for his startup, he recalled that Foundation Capital General Partner Ashu Garg was one of the speakers at Palo Alto Networks on the day he resigned. The takeaway from that talk: AI-native startups will always have a head start against bigger tech players when it comes to AI security. 

Foundation Capital has been investing in AI and data security for more than a decade. Early on, we saw that data grew exponentially, along potential vectors for attack. The vulnerability of smartphones and mobile devices led to our 2010 investment in MobileIron. In 2016, we incubated the pioneering cloud security and cryptography company Fortanix in our Menlo Park offices. (Fortanix went on to raise a $90 million Series C and recently announced record new customer acquisitions). Four years later, customer data privacy company Skyflow was one of the biggest seed bets Foundation Capital had made to date. 

Bridging the gap between code and customer 

Foundation Capital also recognized that Satyam’s deep technical expertise and ability to reel in domain expert engineers made him the entrepreneur to solve a tricky, high-stakes problem. Before Acuvity, Satyam spent seven years as cofounder and VP of Engineering at Aporeto, a machine identity-based cybersecurity startup that was acquired by Palo Alto Networks. An engineer at heart, Satyam began to move fluidly between engineering and go-to-market teams during his time at Aporeto. Expanding that comfort zone helped him grow into a sales leader, and ultimately, a CEO. “I basically said, after 16 years, I’m ready to take on the go-to-market challenges in the new startup,” Satyam says.  

As AI adoption accelerates, so has Acuvity’s momentum. Acuvity already has early customers just a few months into starting the company, a testament to their execution building an enterprise security product. The team is in the middle of multiple proof-of-concept deals and aims to roll out a general release product this quarter. We believe the stakes could not be higher. In McKinsey’s Global Survey from May, 65 percent of companies said their organizations are regularly using AI, double what those companies were doing ten months ago. We expect this trend to continue as enterprises fast-track AI solutions.

If you’re building in data security, AI, or both, please email agarg@foundationcap.com and jgupta@foundationcap.com.