Horizon3.ai: Autonomous Security Solutions Company Closes $40 Million In Funding

By Amit Chowdhry • Aug 10, 2023

Horizon3.ai – a leading provider of autonomous security solutions – recently announced $40 million in Series C funding led by Craft Ventures with participation from Signal Fire. The company has seen 3x customer growth year-over-year. And Horizon3.ai’s NodeZero platform quickly became a leading industry tool for autonomous pentesting, which helps customers quickly verify their security posture and reduce their exploitable attack surface.

This funding round will be used to build out Horizon3.ai’s enterprise-wide, proactive security platform, expand channel and partner presence, and meet customers’ growing demand worldwide. Founded in late 2019, Horizon3.ai has raised $78.5 million to date. And the demand for NodeZero continues to skyrocket: Autonomous penetration testing was recently added as a new category in the U.S. Department of Defense Tech Watchlist. Customers using NodeZero now span 50 industries and 25 countries, including manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, education, and local government.

Horizon3.ai will also integrate pentesting, SOAR, and detection engineering into a security platform that enables customers to proactively secure their enterprise.

KEY QUOTES:

“Being a CISO has never been tougher. Enterprises must now deal with securing their on-prem infrastructure, multiple clouds, hundreds of SaaS services, and IoT assets. Attackers have their eyes on increasingly critical infrastructure like satellites, connected vehicles, fighter jets, and industrial control systems. What’s more, attackers don’t have to ’hack in’ using Zero Days like you see in the movies. Often, they are able to log in using easily guessable or breached employee passwords. Customers turn to us to discover their exploitable attack paths, help fix their riskiest issues, and verify that their fixes worked before they fall into the crosshairs of attackers.”

“My former Commanding General often said, ‘Don’t tell me we’re secure, show me, then show me again tomorrow, and then again next week because our environment is constantly changing and our enemy is always evolving.’ Looking at your enterprise through the eyes of the attacker, assuming breaches will happen, and continuously verifying your security posture are critical pillars for building secure organizations, and Horizon3.ai is leading the way.”

― Snehal Antani, founder and CEO of Horizon3.ai

“We were super impressed by Horizon3.ai’s fully automated approach to continuous penetration testing and security validation. With every pentest executed, Horizon3.ai’s knowledge graphs get smarter, increasing its understanding of how an attacker can compromise a system. We are thrilled to be supporting Horizon3.ai on their next phase of growth.”

― Michael Robinson, Partner at Craft Ventures

“Driven by new and coming regulations including CMMC, DORA, and the recently announced breach reporting guidelines from the SEC, organizations want continuous risk assessment that proves their security effectiveness.”

“Every major change to a company’s environment – applying a patch, deploying new applications, or onboarding new employees – means their attack surface has changed. The pentesting frequency should match this change frequency so that for every ‘Patch Tuesday,’ there’s a ‘Pentest Wednesday’. This continuous assessment approach needs to become second nature – automated in the same fashion as other business processes. This is where NodeZero delivers, and why our customers love it.”

― Bob Cariddi, CRO at Horizon3.ai

“The move from point-in-time to continuous pentesting has been occurring over the last several years. Horizon3.ai’s knowledge graph approach is the most scalable and effective method I’ve witnessed to automate these processes in a way that truly mimics the behaviors of a certified pentester. We’re excited about the value Horizon3.ai will bring to customers as they add more capabilities on top of their unique data set that doesn’t exist commercially today.”

― Bil Harmer, 5-time CISO and Operating Partner at Craft Ventures