Defend AI, a Seattle startup that sells cybersecurity tech tailor-made to code that powers synthetic intelligence and machine studying packages, emerged from stealth mode and introduced $13.5 million in seed funding.
The corporate’s first product is NB Protection, which works to handle vulnerabilities in Jupyter Notebooks, an open-sourced internet utility for creating and sharing computational paperwork that’s utilized in machine learning-based environments.
“The issue that we’re fixing is that code is just not code because it pertains to machine studying,” CEO and co-founder Ian Swanson informed Startup. “Machine studying code and instruments are completely different. And due to this fact they’re really not lined by our conventional cybersecurity firms.”
As firms are deploying AI and machine studying throughout all points of their enterprise, they want a instrument that may scour by way of code to seek out something that’s probably malicious or compromising, Swanson stated.
Within the conventional cybersecurity house, there are giant gamers resembling Snyk, which helps builders find potential safety dangers of their code. Swanson stated that Defend AI shall be among the many first startups that focuses particularly on machine studying and AI code.
A problem with being a first-mover within the house, he added, shall be convincing info safety execs that their present options don’t work past conventional code.
Defend AI will work in Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Internet Serivces.
That is Swanson’s third startup. His first firm was Sometrics, a digital forex platform and in-game funds supplier. It was acquired by American Specific in 2011. After that, he based DataScience.com, a cloud workspace platform that was acquired by Oracle in 2018. Swanson additionally held AI management roles at AWS and Oracle.
Swanson co-founded Defend AI with Badar Ahmed, a former engineering chief at Oracle and DataScience, and Daryan Dehghanpisheh, a former chief at AWS.
Defend AI has 15 workers and expects to rent two extra individuals by the top of the yr.
The spherical was co-led by Acrew Capital and Boldstart Ventures. Acrew founding accomplice Mark Kraynak and Boldstart founding accomplice Ed Sim will be a part of the Defend AI board. Different traders embody Knollwood Capital, Pelion Ventures, Avisio Ventures, Shlomo Kramer, Nir Polak, and Dimitri Sirota.