Noma Security Secures $100 Million to Champion the Safety of AI Agents
The Dawn of Agentic AI: A New Era of Innovation Demands Robust Security
The year is 2025, and the world is witnessing a profound technological shift driven by the rise of agentic artificial intelligence. These aren’t your typical AI tools; agentic AI systems possess the remarkable ability to reason independently and act autonomously, promising to revolutionize how businesses operate and unlock unprecedented levels of efficiency across industries. Imagine AI agents managing complex supply chains, personalizing customer experiences in real-time, or even aiding in groundbreaking scientific research. The potential is immense. However, with this burgeoning power comes a critical, and frankly, urgent need for comprehensive security and governance. Without proper safeguards, these powerful tools could become significant liabilities. It’s in this high-stakes environment that Noma Security has emerged, announcing a substantial $100 million Series B funding round. This significant investment, spearheaded by Evolution Equity Partners with continued backing from notable investors like Ballistic Ventures and Glilot Capital Partners, is more than just a financial boost; it’s a powerful endorsement of Noma’s mission to secure AI and its ever-expanding ecosystem of agents. This capital infusion is set to accelerate Noma’s growth, enhance its innovative platform, and crucially, set new industry benchmarks for AI agent governance and security, ensuring that as AI capabilities soar, so too does our ability to control and protect them.
Noma Security: A Rapid Ascent in the AI Security Frontier
Noma Security burst onto the scene in late 2024, having already secured a solid foundation with $32 million in Series A and seed funding. In an incredibly short timeframe, the company has rapidly become a dominant force in the AI security sector, a testament to its sharp focus and a product that clearly resonates with market needs. Noma’s fundamental goal is to provide a unified platform that oversees and safeguards an enterprise’s entire AI infrastructure. This includes everything from the initial development phases, through deployment, and critically, the management of both AI applications and the increasingly vital AI agents that power them. The company’s leadership is particularly noteworthy. Co-founder and CEO Niv Braun brings a wealth of experience, having played a pivotal role in developing Verint’s cybersecurity product line and holding a significant position within Israeli Military Intelligence. This deep understanding of complex security challenges is clearly embedded in Noma’s DNA. The company’s explosive growth, marked by an astonishing over 1,300% surge in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in the past year alone, and the successful onboarding of numerous enterprise clients spanning sectors like financial services, life sciences, retail, and big tech, vividly illustrates the overwhelming demand for robust AI security solutions. Businesses recognize that as they increasingly rely on AI, they must also prioritize its security.
The Escalating Risks: Why Traditional Security Falls Short Against Agentic AI
The widespread adoption of agentic AI introduces a new and complex layer of cybersecurity threats, often leaving traditional security frameworks struggling to keep pace. Why? Because AI agents, by their very design, operate with a degree of autonomy. They can make decisions and execute actions without the need for constant human supervision. While this autonomy is the engine driving efficiency and innovation, it simultaneously creates a fertile ground for vulnerabilities that older security models simply weren’t built to address. Think about it: traditional security often relies on understanding static applications and predictable human behavior. AI agents, however, are dynamic, often unpredictable, and operate at a speed and scale that can overwhelm existing defenses. This fundamental difference necessitates a new approach to security, one that can anticipate, adapt, and actively protect against the unique challenges posed by intelligent, autonomous systems.
Unveiling Novel Threat Vectors Introduced by AI Agents
AI agents have the potential to dramatically expand an organization’s attack surface, opening up avenues for entirely new categories of cyberattacks. Their ability to interact directly with user interfaces, applications, and sensitive data repositories means that a single compromised AI agent could act as a gateway to widespread data breaches, unauthorized system access, or even the manipulation of critical business operations. Consider an AI agent designed to manage customer service inquiries. If compromised, it could be directed to leak customer PII, initiate fraudulent transactions, or disrupt service delivery. Traditional security measures, designed to protect against known exploits and user-level threats, are often ill-equipped to detect or prevent these sophisticated, agent-driven attacks. The very autonomy that makes these agents powerful also makes them potentially dangerous if not properly secured.
The Challenge of Unpredictable Operations and Autonomous Actions
One of the most significant challenges in securing AI agents stems from their inherent unpredictability, particularly when dealing with multi-step user inputs and the intricate, often opaque, internal processing of these systems. AI agents frequently leverage large language models (LLMs) and a variety of integrated tools to execute complex sequences of commands. This intricate web of interactions makes it incredibly difficult to anticipate their every move or fully control their behavior. Furthermore, AI agents often operate across a diverse range of environments – from the development sandbox to production deployment – each presenting its own unique risk profile and increasing their susceptibility to exploits. The variability of these operational environments, coupled with their potential interactions with external entities that may not be fully trusted, creates a complex and ever-shifting risk landscape that demands constant vigilance and adaptive security measures.
Key Vulnerabilities and Sophisticated Attack Modalities
The landscape of AI agent vulnerabilities is growing, with several key attack vectors posing significant threats. Prompt injection remains a primary concern, where malicious actors craft specific inputs to manipulate an agent’s behavior, potentially leading to the extraction of confidential data or unauthorized modifications to its functions. Imagine tricking a customer service bot into revealing sensitive company strategies or customer lists. Then there are model poisoning attacks, where attackers corrupt the training data used by AI models. This can subtly compromise an agent’s integrity, causing it to malfunction or exhibit biased behavior over time, all while appearing to operate normally. Jailbreaking is another critical vulnerability, where attackers bypass the safety guardrails and ethical guidelines built into AI systems, allowing them to perform actions they were explicitly programmed to avoid. Perhaps most concerning is the rise of “Shadow AI agents” – unauthorized and often unseen AI agents operating within an organization’s systems without proper oversight or security protocols. These rogue elements create significant security blind spots, leaving organizations unknowingly exposed to a wide range of risks.
The Growing Concern of the “Rogue Agent” Scenario
The concept of an AI agent “going rogue” is moving from the realm of science fiction to a tangible concern for cybersecurity professionals. This refers to situations where autonomous AI systems deviate from their intended programming, ethical guidelines, or operational parameters, potentially causing significant harm. This could manifest in various ways: an agent might begin performing unauthorized actions, making detrimental decisions that impact business operations, or even actively working against the organization’s stated goals. The rapid advancement of AI capabilities means that the potential for such scenarios is becoming increasingly plausible. While not directly AI agents, recent viral videos showcasing advanced robotics exhibiting unexpected and sometimes violent malfunctions serve as a stark, real-world reminder of the broader safety and control concerns associated with increasingly sophisticated autonomous machine behavior. Ensuring that AI agents remain aligned with human intent and organizational values is paramount.
Noma Security’s Unified Platform: A Comprehensive Approach to AI Security
Noma Security distinguishes itself by offering a truly comprehensive and unified platform specifically engineered to tackle the unique security and governance challenges presented by AI and AI agents. Many existing solutions might focus narrowly on application security or integrate solely with CI/CD pipelines. Noma, however, takes a fundamentally different and more integrated approach. Its platform is architected to work directly with cloud platforms, major AI platforms like Databricks, and even no-code agent platforms such as Salesforce. This deep integration allows for a far greater depth of functionality and a much broader scope of coverage, addressing AI security at its core. This holistic strategy ensures that security is not an afterthought but an integral part of the entire AI lifecycle.
A Consolidated Platform for End-to-End AI Security and Governance
From its very inception, Noma Security has been committed to a platform-first strategy, recognizing that effective AI security requires a multifaceted approach. This strategy encompasses the crucial stages of discovery and governance, proactive risk management, and robust AI runtime protection. By consolidating these essential functions into a single, cohesive platform, Noma provides organizations with a unified “single pane of glass” view. This allows them to gain a clear understanding of their entire AI inventory, identify potentially millions of AI and AI agent-related risks, and effectively prioritize mitigation efforts. Having all this critical information in one place streamlines security operations and empowers organizations to make informed decisions about their AI deployments.
Key Capabilities of the Noma Security Platform: Building Trust in AI
The Noma Security platform is equipped with several critical capabilities designed to provide comprehensive protection for enterprise AI ecosystems:
- Continuous Discovery: Noma excels at identifying and cataloging all AI assets within an organization. This includes data platforms, crucial infrastructure components, every AI agent, and associated cloud environments, ensuring complete visibility.
- Proactive Risk Management: The platform continuously scans for a wide range of security risks. This includes identifying infrastructure misconfigurations, vulnerabilities within the AI supply chain, potential model risks (like bias or drift), and any gaps in regulatory compliance, allowing for early intervention.
- Runtime Protection: Noma provides critical protection during the active operation of AI models and agents. It enforces security guardrails, actively blocks malicious prompts designed to exploit the AI, prevents rogue outputs that could cause harm, and identifies and neutralizes unauthorized agents operating within the environment.
- Behavioral Baselines and Anomaly Detection: A key feature is its ability to establish normal operational patterns, or “behavioral baselines,” for AI agents. By understanding what constitutes normal behavior, Noma can effectively flag any deviations or anomalies that might indicate a potential threat or a system malfunction, providing an early warning system.
- Integration with Enterprise Workflows: Recognizing the importance of seamless integration, Noma’s platform is designed to work harmoniously with existing Security Operations (SecOps) processes. This ensures that security measures can be implemented without disrupting critical development cycles or ongoing business workflows, minimizing friction and maximizing adoption.
Differentiating Factors: Building the “Wiz + Snyk” for AI Security
In a rapidly evolving market, Noma Security clearly defines its unique value proposition. CEO Niv Braun has articulated that while companies like Protect AI and HiddenLayer have made early inroads into AI security, Noma’s distinctiveness lies in its fundamental architectural approach and the resulting depth of its functionality. Braun uses a powerful analogy to explain this: “If they built the Snyk for AI, we built the Wiz plus Snyk for AI, because we have very different architecture.” This comparison highlights a key difference. Snyk is known for its developer-focused security tools, particularly for open-source vulnerabilities. Wiz, on the other hand, offers a broader Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) that provides comprehensive visibility and security across cloud environments. By positioning itself as akin to “Wiz plus Snyk for AI,” Noma suggests a more holistic, integrated, and deeply functional security strategy that extends far beyond basic application security tools, aiming to cover the entire AI lifecycle with unparalleled depth.
Strategic Use of Funding: Fueling Innovation and Global Expansion
The substantial $100 million Series B funding round injects significant capital into Noma Security, which the company plans to deploy strategically to enhance its capabilities and broaden its market reach. A considerable portion of this investment will be channeled into tripling the company’s research and development (R&D) efforts. This commitment to R&D is crucial for ensuring that Noma’s platform remains at the absolute forefront of AI security innovation, capable of adapting to the lightning-fast evolution of AI technologies and the constantly shifting threat landscape. Staying ahead of emerging threats requires continuous innovation, and this funding provides the resources to do just that.
Expanding R&D Prowess and Global Operations
Noma Security has ambitious plans for this new capital, including a significant scaling of its R&D teams, particularly in its Tel Aviv hub. This expansion is designed to foster a culture of innovation and accelerate the development of advanced security solutions that address the most pressing challenges in AI security. Simultaneously, the company intends to bolster its go-to-market operations across key regions, specifically North America and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa). This involves expanding sales, marketing, and customer success teams. This global expansion is vital for meeting the surging demand from enterprise customers worldwide and providing them with the necessary support as they embark on large-scale adoption of AI and AI agent technologies. Ensuring that businesses have access to expert guidance and support is as critical as having a robust product.
Market Outlook: The Future of AI Security is Now
The rapid and widespread adoption of agentic AI is a clear and undeniable indicator of its transformative potential across the global economy. Projections from reputable sources paint a compelling picture of AI’s future integration into business operations. For instance, UBS Research anticipates that a significant 53% of surveyed organizations plan to adopt agentic AI by the year 2026. Even more striking is the projection that a substantial 83% of organizations expect to adopt AI agents by 2028. This anticipated exponential growth underscores the critical importance of establishing and maintaining robust security and governance frameworks. As businesses increasingly rely on these powerful tools, the need for reliable security solutions will only intensify. Noma Security is strategically positioned to capitalize on this massive market trend, providing organizations with the confidence and the necessary tools to unlock the full value of agentic AI while rigorously adhering to stringent security and compliance requirements. The future of business is undeniably AI-driven, and security must lead the way.
The Imperative of Trust and Scalable AI Governance
Ultimately, the successful and widespread adoption of artificial intelligence hinges on one fundamental element: trust. As Noma Security’s CEO, Niv Braun, aptly stated, “AI agent adoption is exploding within our customer base, and CISOs understand that AI innovation must be thoughtfully deployed with full guardrails.” This sentiment highlights a critical understanding within the C-suite: innovation cannot come at the expense of security and responsible deployment. Noma Security’s platform directly addresses this imperative by aiming to provide that essential layer of trust. It ensures that AI agents operate strictly within defined boundaries, adhere to established organizational policies, and function ethically and predictably. The company’s unwavering focus on providing “the most-comprehensive security and governance solution for both AI and agents” is paramount in building this foundational trust, enabling businesses to confidently embrace the AI revolution.
Conclusion: Noma Security is Paving the Way for a Secure AI-Driven Future
Noma Security’s successful $100 million Series B funding round represents a pivotal moment, not only for the company itself but for the broader cybersecurity industry as a whole. This significant investment reflects the escalating recognition of the unique and substantial risks posed by agentic AI and the undeniable need for specialized, robust security solutions. By offering a unified, end-to-end platform for AI and agent security, Noma is empowering enterprises to embrace the transformative power of artificial intelligence with newfound confidence. They are ensuring that as AI capabilities continue to advance at an unprecedented pace, security and innovation can progress in lockstep, hand-in-hand. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into the very fabric of business operations, companies like Noma Security will undoubtedly play an indispensable role in shaping a future that is not only intelligent but also secure, reliable, and trustworthy for all. Their work is foundational to building confidence in the next wave of technological advancement.