Theory Ventures leads funding round for transformational GenAI-powered cybersecurity agents
SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today, Dropzone AI, developer of AI security analysts for security operations teams, announced it has raised $16.85M in Series A funding. Theory Ventures led the round, adding to their cohort of existing investors Decibel Partners, Pioneer Square Ventures, and In-Q-Tel (IQT). Carta CISO Garrett Held, Head of Security at Postman Joshua Scott, and Integreon President and Head of Cyber Solutions Anshu Gupta also joined the Series A round. Theory Ventures Founder Tomasz Tunguz will join the board as part of its investment. Dropzone will use this new injection of capital to continue scaling its GTM motion and its engineering team.
Cyber defenders worldwide are losing the war against attackers due to a systemic lack of resources: there is a global shortage of about 4 million cybersecurity workers. The issue is especially severe among smaller organizations with limited budgets. Managed security service providers (an $80 billion market) also have to make tough trade-offs between quality and labor costs, leading to compromised and inconsistent security coverage. In short: cyber defenders cannot win the war against attackers on human brain power alone.
Dropzone AI is the first AI SOC analyst to replicate the techniques of elite human analysts. It autonomously investigates alerts (including cloud, network, identity, endpoint, and phishing alerts) 24/7, giving cybersecurity teams the ability to do vastly more work with the same team. The Dropzone AI analyst reduces the manual work of human analysts associated with alerts by 90% – taking the task of investigating alerts from 5-40 minutes per alert to 3 minutes to review reports on the most pressing threats. Instead of being a copilot or chatbot that requires constant prompting, Dropzone autonomously orchestrates tier-1 security alert investigation end-to-end. It does not require any playbooks, code, or chat prompts and can be deployed in 30 minutes. As a result, analyst teams can focus on real threats and amplify their output. Dropzone AI was recently named a finalist in the 2024 RSAC Innovation Sandbox Contest, the youngest and the only Gen AI-powered enterprise security technology in that cohort.
“Cyberdefenders are losing today and will face more challenges when attackers leverage AI for more sophisticated attacks,” said Edward Wu, founder and CEO at Dropzone AI. “Dropzone AI gives defenders extra brainpower through AI reinforcements that tackle the routine and time-consuming tasks of investigating alerts, allowing SecOps teams to focus on the high-priority threats and projects.”
“Dropzone combines a deep understanding of security operations with the most powerful AI systems in security,” said Tomasz Tunguz, Founder of Theory Ventures. “Dropzone’s virtual analysts automate rote analytical security work to ensure stronger defenses against an increasing number of increasingly advanced AI attacks.”
Critical Insight, a leading Managed XDR provider, is leveraging Dropzone’s AI SOC analysts to improve the depth of its investigations. Garrett Silver, CEO of Critical Insight notes, “The use of Dropzone allows Critical Insight’s SOC analysts to concentrate on the tasks that truly require human intelligence while having Dropzone handle SOC tasks suited for AI. We’ve measured and validated an increase in the speed and quality of investigations. Critical Insight’s mission is to defend hospitals and cities against cyberattacks. Speed and accuracy matters. Giving our SOC analysts the right kinds of AI tools can save lives.”
“Dropzone gives you more accurate, more complete analyses of investigation data. It leads to issue resolution in 10% of the time, and it even gets better with use,” said Jonathan Jaffee, CISO at Lemonade Insurance. “It will allow you to resolve more issues in less time. And, it will increase your team’s happiness and reduce its burnout.”
“Dropzone goes beyond chatbots and copilots and delivers true end-to-end autonomous investigations,” said William Morrison, Principal at IQT. “IQT and our government partners are excited about Dropzone’s innovative approach to leveling up cyber.”
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ABOUT DROPZONE
Dropzone AI delivers pre-trained autonomous AI analysts that work alongside human analysts on security operations teams. It handles the frontline work of investigating the mountain of alerts from security systems. Using cutting-edge LLMs, Dropzone’s AI analysts perform end-to-end investigations replicating the techniques of elite analysts and enable human analysts to focus on real threats and higher-value work. Founded by cyber defense and AI expert Edward Wu, Dropzone is backed by Theory, Decibel, PSL, In-Q-Tel, and renowned cybersecurity angel investors and entrepreneurs: Oliver Friedrichs, Jon Oberheide, Jesse Rothstein, Garrett Held, Joshua Scott, and Anshu Gupta. Learn more at www.dropzone.ai.
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