Zenity raises $125M to secure autonomous AI agents.

Zenity has secured $125 million in a Series C funding round led by Norwest, with participation from new backers Qumra Capital, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Hitachi Ventures, and LG Technology Ventures, alongside existing investors Vertex Ventures, Third Point Ventures, DTCP, and Intel Capital. This capital injection follows a $38 million Series B in October 2024, bringing the startup's total disclosed funding to at least $180 million. Zenity, which employs over 230 people across its Tel Aviv research hub and New York headquarters, plans to use the funds to expand into Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, scale its Zenity Labs research division, and enhance its security platform. The company reports its revenue has tripled annually for the past two years and is projected to triple again this year.

The funding highlights a shift from passive chatbots to active AI agents that can execute code, modify databases, and trigger workflows. Zenity targets this "agent-layer" risk by monitoring configurations, permissions, and runtime actions rather than just filtering prompts. Its platform provides observability, posture management, and threat detection across diverse environments. This includes software-as-a-service agents like Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Copilot Studio, ChatGPT Enterprise, and Salesforce Agentforce, as well as custom models built on AWS Bedrock, Azure AI Foundry, and Google Vertex AI. It also secures local tools like coding assistants and agentic browsers.

For security practitioners, autonomous agents introduce complex threat vectors where traditional firewalls and prompt filters fail. Zenity Labs demonstrated these vulnerabilities through its "AgentFlayer" research, showing how zero-click and one-click attacks can hijack agents via malicious emails or documents. In another test, researchers manipulated Perplexity's Comet agentic browser using hidden instructions in a calendar invite, forcing the agent to access an unlocked 1Password web vault. For IT security teams, Zenity's approach changes the paradigm from reactive monitoring to active runtime governance. It allows practitioners to inventory all active agents, restrict excessive permissions, and block unauthorized tool calls before they result in data breaches.