Today marks a pivotal moment in our journey at Pillar Security. We are thrilled to announce we’ve secured $9 million in Seed funding, led by Shield Capital, with participation from Golden Ventures, Ground Up Ventures, and esteemed strategic angels. We’re incredibly proud to partner with investors who possess profound cybersecurity, threat intelligence, and AI expertise—and who share our conviction that securing the AI software lifecycle demands an entirely new, foundational paradigm.
Securing Software in the Intelligence Age
We’re entering one of the most profound transformations in technology history. Just as the internet reshaped communication and cloud computing revolutionized how businesses operate, artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming the central nervous system of modern software. This marks a time in which software is transitioning from executing predictable logic to possessing intelligent agency.
This isn't just an evolution but a fundamental redefinition of what software is and what it can do. But as software gains this incredible agency, moving from predictable logic to intelligent action, a critical question emerges — one that echoes in every conversation we have: How do we ensure this powerful future is also a secure one?
Every day, we talk to brilliant teams building the future with AI. Their excitement is palpable. They're creating applications that were science fiction just a few years ago. But beneath the excitement, there's a shared undercurrent of uncertainty and worry. How do we harness these complex, dynamic systems without losing control? How do we build and maintain trust in software that learns and acts on its own?
If AI truly is the new electricity, as many believe, powering the next wave of innovation, then ensuring its safety, reliability, and trustworthiness isn't just a feature — it's foundational. It’s the bedrock upon which this entire revolution must be built.
New Principles for the AI Era
The Intelligence Age operates under new laws:
- Data is executable: Prompts, configurations, and datasets directly influence software behavior in ways raw code never did. Data isn't passive information anymore—it's an instruction.
- Software has agency: AI isn't merely following static commands; it's making decisions, taking actions, learning, and adapting autonomously. Software is evolving from tool to agent.
- Security becomes foundational: When data can execute and software can act independently, security can't be an afterthought. It must be baked in from the beginning, underpinning everything. Trust isn't just a feature—it's the bedrock.
Pillar Security was built for this new reality.
The Security Gap
For years, we've relied on a solid, deterministic approach to application security: the DevSecOps loop. Tools like SAST, DAST, WAFs, SCA – they’ve served us well for software that followed predictable rules. We could test, check, and verify.
But AI doesn't play by these old rules. It's not just another layer on the stack; it introduces an entirely new lifecycle. AI agents learn, evolve, and change in production. Their outputs aren't always predictable. This inherent dynamism and excessive agency create unique risks — vulnerabilities such as sensitive data leakage, prompt injection, and resource hijacking — that traditional tools simply weren't designed to see, let alone mitigate.
The recent stats are sobering: a Deloitte survey found 77% of cybersecurity leaders deeply concerned about these AI-specific threats, and alarmingly, two in five organizations have already faced an AI-related security incident. The old maps just don't work in this new territory.
This fundamental gap — the chasm between AI's potential and our ability to trust it — is why we founded Pillar Security.
The Pillar Approach: A Unified Command Center for AI Security
We believe that for AI innovation to truly thrive, security must be an enabling force, not a barrier. It needs to be foundational, seamlessly integrated across the entire AI journey. That’s why Pillar delivers one unified platform to continuously identify, assess, and mitigate AI security risks, spanning the full lifecycle from development, experimentation and testing through to real-time production monitoring, detection and response.
Imagine an intelligent guardian, constantly observing your AI systems from the inside out. Something that provides clear visibility into the "black box," diagnoses hidden risks before they manifest, and enables proactive intervention without stifling the innovation you seek.
That's Pillar. Think of it as a smart pill for your AI infrastructure. It travels through your AI development lifecycle and offers continuous:
- Visibility: Understanding precisely how and where AI is being used.
- Risk Assessment: Identifying the unique vulnerabilities and compliance gaps inherent in AI systems.
- Risk Mitigation: Providing the means to proactively address these risks, automatically and adaptively.
Intelligence-Driven AI Security
In the early days of the internet, security took a giant leap forward with centralized threat intelligence, like VirusTotal, allowing us to collectively defend against emerging threats. AI security demands the same proactive intelligence.
That's why we've dedicated ourselves to building the industry's largest AI threat intelligence feed. Powered by insights from analyzing millions of real-world AI application interactions, and developed in collaboration with our ecosystem partners, Pillar’s proprietary engines continuously optimize and help detect and neutralize emerging AI threats as they happen.
Our research, fueled by this data, has already uncovered critical vulnerabilities like the "Rules File Backdoor" in popular AI coding agents (GitHub Copilot and Cursor). Last year, we published the industry's first report on real-world attacks against GenAI applications, revealing the alarming speed and success rate of threats like jailbreaks, averaging just 42 seconds, with nearly 20% succeeding. This intelligence is the lifeblood of proactive AI security.
Delivering Protection in an Era of Constant Change
In a world where AI evolves continuously, security must evolve alongside it. Pillar provides the essential security fabric—one unified platform that gives AI innovators and security teams a shared language, clarity, and proactive control over AI-specific threats.
This unified approach isn't theoretical—it's grounded by continuous research and innovation and already trusted by innovators at leading enterprises. From Fortune 500 organizations to cutting-edge companies like Similarweb, Eleos Health, and AvidXchange, Pillar’s customers consistently emphasize the value of having a partner who doesn't just identify vulnerabilities but proactively helps remediate them throughout the entire AI lifecycle. By aligning security precisely with each application’s unique risks and goals, Pillar enables organizations to innovate rapidly without compromising trust.
Pillar itself is built upon a fundamental conviction: tackling something as complex and critical as securing AI demands more than just effort – it requires a concentration of truly exceptional, almost unreasonably ambitious talent. We count ourselves incredibly fortunate to be in the trenches daily with the team that embodies this. These aren't just engineers and researchers - they are artisans of the future, dismantling technological barriers and redefining what's possible. Watching them build and deliver at machine speed, fueled by an insatiable curiosity and a profound passion for the convergence of security and AI, is genuinely awe-inspiring. They don't just understand the mission; they live it. This team is Pillar.
The Intelligence Age is here. Pillar is securing it.
— Dor Sarig & Ziv Karliner, Co-Founders, Pillar Security
You can meet us at RSA 2025 in San Fransisco or get in touch here
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