HiddenLayer, an AI security company, recently secured $100 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total raised capital to over $155 million. This significant investment, led by Delta-v Capital with support from Microsoft’s M12, Booz Allen Ventures, Morgan Stanley, and Ten Eleven Ventures, underscores the growing imperative for specialized artificial intelligence security solutions. Founded in 2022, HiddenLayer focuses on safeguarding the entire lifecycle of agentic, generative, and predictive AI applications against emerging threats, as reported by SecurityWeek.
The Growing Need for AI Runtime Protection
As enterprises increasingly adopt AI, particularly agentic AI that can write, review, and ship code with reduced human oversight, the attack surface expands significantly. The urgency for purpose-built AI security has become undeniable. HiddenLayer’s CEO, Chris Sestito, emphasized that the company aimed to pioneer trusted, secure AI use for enterprises long before the widespread recognition of this critical need. The new capital will enable HiddenLayer to further develop its platform to meet the demands of enterprises as agentic AI becomes a core operational component.
Securing Agentic AI Applications in Production
HidderLayer’s enterprise platform provides a comprehensive suite of security capabilities designed to protect AI systems. These include discovery mechanisms for identifying AI assets, supply chain security to ensure the integrity of AI models and data, attack simulation to test AI defenses, and crucial runtime protection for AI agents. This end-to-end approach is essential for ensuring compliance, facilitating safe AI adoption, and protecting intellectual property embedded within AI models and applications. The company highlights that only AI-native security can continuously test and prove trust in AI systems, especially those operating autonomously.
Strategic Investment in Advanced AI Security
The newly acquired funds will be strategically deployed to enhance HiddenLayer’s platform, specifically expanding its agentic runtime security capabilities to cover AI coding agents. This expansion aims to provide enterprises with deeper visibility into how AI agents function in production environments. By monitoring these agents, organizations can effectively detect and stop anomalous behavior, including manipulation attempts, misuse, and unauthorized actions that could compromise systems or data. The focus on autonomous agents that handle sensitive tasks like code generation and review signifies a recognition of a high-risk area requiring specialized protection.
Recommendations for Protecting AI Deployments
For security professionals tasked with mitigating anomalous behavior in AI agents, the funding announcement underscores several key priorities:
- Implement AI-Native Security Solutions: Generic security tools may not adequately address the unique vulnerabilities of AI models and agent behaviors. Prioritise solutions specifically designed for AI.
- Gain Visibility into AI Agent Actions: Establish monitoring capabilities to observe how AI agents operate in production. This visibility is vital for identifying deviations from expected behavior, which can be crucial for effective AI runtime protection for enterprise agents.
- Address AI Supply Chain Risks: Ensure the security of AI models, training data, and associated infrastructure from their inception to deployment.
- Simulate AI Attacks: Regularly conduct attack simulations against AI systems to proactively identify weaknesses and validate defense mechanisms.
- Focus on Runtime Protection: Given the dynamic nature of agentic AI, real-time runtime protection is essential to prevent exploitation and misuse during operation.
Related: Agentic AI: New Security Challenges for Confidential Computing, Agentic AI Cyber Warfare: Risks of Autonomous Offensive Operations