Pillar Security, an AI-based security startup that helps enterprises build and run secure AI software, announced it has raised $9 million in seed funding. Shield Capital led the round, which was joined by Golden Ventures, Ground Up Ventures, and other strategic angel investors. The funds will support expanding Pillar’s R&D and go-to-market efforts.
With organizations rapidly building and deploying AI-based software systems, traditional cybersecurity tools and processes struggle to keep pace, creating critical protection gaps. And many organizations have already experienced an AI-related security or privacy incident, many of which were malicious. So the need for a purpose-built AI security solution has never been more urgent. Pillar Security addresses this need head-on, providing an end-to-end security platform designed explicitly for AI-integrated software systems.
Pillar’s end-to-end platform tackles the complete AI lifecycle and its evolving threat landscape. And Pillar seamlessly integrates with existing code repositories, data infrastructures, and AI/ML platforms that teams already rely on, delivering immediate value without disrupting established workflows. Plus, it automatically maps all AI-related assets across the organization — ranging from models and datasets to prompts, notebooks, and frameworks.
Pillar also rigorously tests AI models and their underlying infrastructure, applications, and agentic layers on which they’re built upon. And this comprehensive approach enables Pillar to deploy customized and adaptive guardrails aligned with each AI application’s unique risk profile and specific business objectives, proactively preventing failures that directly impact operational continuity.
Pillar is transforming the AI security landscape through research powered by unmatched real-world threat intelligence. And by establishing the industry’s largest AI threat intelligence feed, Pillar has analyzed insights from over 50 million AI application interactions to date. This visibility advances Pillar’s advanced threat modeling and precision risk engines, proactively detecting and countering live AI attacks in production.
The company is working with leading AI innovators from Fortune 500 companies to tech enterprises such as Similarweb, Eleos Health, and AvidXchange, while actively collaborating with key players throughout the AI ecosystem and industry-leading organizations.
KEY QUOTES:
“AI is fundamentally changing the way we build software — it doesn’t just add another step to traditional processes; it introduces an entirely new lifecycle. We are entering the intelligence age, where software has gained agency and data itself has become executable. Pillar’s technology, backed by real-world AI threat intelligence, is built with this understanding, delivering a new class of protection designed explicitly for AI-related security risks. We are redefining application security to match the agentic and autonomous software of the Intelligence Age. This funding accelerates our mission to set new AI security benchmarks, empowering organizations to innovate securely and confidently, while uniting AI teams and security teams around a common language and toolset.”
Dor Sarig, CEO & Co-Founder at Pillar Security
“As agentic AI systems are increasingly being deployed within businesses, hand in hand with an equally burgeoning threat surface, Pillar uniquely understands that securing software in the AI era requires more than incremental improvements. Their visionary approach sets a new standard for how organizations secure and manage intelligent systems. Pillar’s team expertise, together with their holistic security vision, is precisely why we led this investment round.”
Shield Capital’s lead investor Elias Manousos (former CVP at Microsoft responsible for AI Copilot for Security and Threat Intelligence and former CEO of RiskIQ)
“Enterprise AI adoption can only scale with security and compliance evolving in tandem. Pillar is a pioneer in defining and provisioning “trust infrastructure” that streamlines and secures AI procurement, development and deployment across the enterprise. Its platform is critical to enable leaders in any industry to drive AI transformation quickly, responsibly and securely.”
Nick Chen, Partner at Golden Ventures
“What impressed us most about Pillar was their holistic approach to AI security. With dozens of AI initiatives in development, we needed a security partner that not only pinpoints vulnerabilities but also helps remediate them automatically. Pillar’s tailored red teaming provides critical insights that continuously enrich their adaptive guardrails, uniquely aligned with each AI application’s specific risk profile and business objectives — this was a game-changer for us.”
Tomer Maman, CISO @ Similarweb
“Businesses leveraging AI face a rapidly evolving set of risks — from model integrity and data poisoning to supply chain threats, and sophisticated inference attacks. Pillar was purpose-built for this reality, delivering robust protection amid the radical impact of AI, ensuring organizations remain secure, compliant, and agile.”
Navot Volk at Ground Up Ventures
