Vega Security raises $120M Series B to transform enterprise cyber threat detection with AI

Vega raises $120M Series B to rethink how enterprises detect cyber threats | TechCrunch

Modern enterprises generate enormous amounts of security data, but legacy tools like Splunk still require companies to store all of it in one place before they can detect threats - a slow and costly process that's increasingly breaking down in cloud environments where volumes are exploding and data lives everywhere. AI cybersecurity startup Vega Security wants to flip that approach by running security where the data already lives, implementing in cloud services, data lakes, and existing storage systems. And the two-year-old firm just raised a $120 million Series B round to scale that vision, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. Led by Accel with participation from Cyberstarts, Redpoint, and CRV, the new round nearly doubles Vega's valuation to $700M and brings its total funding to $185 million, money the startup will use to further develop its AI-native security operations suite, beef out its go-to-market team, and expand globally. Shay Sandler, co-founder and CEO of Vega, told TechCrunch that the current operating model of the SIEM (security information and event management) -- the dominant technology in this domain for the last two decades -- is not only "crazy expensive," but is also increasingly causing AI-native security operations to fail. In complex cloud environments, he says, the current model often increases exposure to threat actors. "Vega has defined a new operating model that enables organizations to leverage the full potential of their enterprise data to achieve incident response readiness, without all the complexity, the cost, the drama," Shay Sandler, co-founder and CEO of Vega, told TechCrunch. "We want to simply enable them to reach AI-native detection response capability anywhere the data is, at scale." Like so many cybersecurity founders, Sandler did his time in the Israeli military's cybersecurity unit before being one of the founding employees behind Granulate, which Intel acquired for $650 million in 2022. After a year at Intel, Sandler decided to "do it big time in the cybersecurity world." That pedigree is partly what attracted the attention of Andrei Brasoveanu, a partner at Accel. But it was also Vega's ambitious approach to security management in a market that is already dominated by one player: Splunk. Brasoveanu told TechCrunch that legacy SIEM companies like Splunk, which Cisco acquired in 2024 for $28 billion, have been criticized in recent years because their solutions are difficult to scale. They fail at processing the insane rise of data volumes driven by AI. "Splunk and every contender since has always centralized the data, but by doing that you essentially hold the customer hostage," Brasoveanu said. However, sometimes it's easier to hate the status quo than do the work of making a switch to a better alternative, a quandary any startup attempting to breach enterprise budgets understands. That's why Sandler says Vega's "North Star" was to not only build a solution that is more cost effective and better at threat detection, but "to make it no drama, as simple as possible for the biggest, most complex enterprises in the world to adopt it within minutes." Vega's approach seems to be working. The 100-person startup has already signed multi-million-dollar contracts with banks, healthcare companies, and Fortune 500 firms, including cloud-heavy companies like Instacart. "The only reason they would do that with a two-year-old startup is because the problem is so painful and other solutions on the market require an unrealistic expectation that the enterprise change the way they operate or do two years of data migrations," Sandler said. "Vega enables them to just plug and play and achieve immediate detection response value."

Vega lands $120M Series B to expand Security Analytics Mesh platform - SiliconANGLE

Vega lands $120M Series B to expand Security Analytics Mesh platform Artificial intelligence native security analytics startup Vega Security Inc. announced today that it had raised $120 million in new funding to accelerate product development and expand its go-to-market team. Founded in 2024, Vega offers an AI-native security analytics platform that is designed to support the full security operations lifecycle without requiring centralized data ingestion. The company's platform is built around what it calls a "Security Analytics Mesh," a federated model that allows security teams to analyze, search and detect threats directly against data stored across cloud platforms, data lakes, software-as-a-service services and existing log repositories. Vega's platform works by deploying analytics and detection logic close to where data resides to allow security teams to run queries and detections across distributed environments without duplicating or migrating logs into a single system. The platform supports structured and unstructured security data and integrates with common enterprise data stores and cloud environments, with a focus on reducing infrastructure overhead and eliminating delays introduced by data movement and normalization. AI is key to the offering, with the platform applying AI across multiple stages of security operations, including detection creation, alert correlation, investigation and triage and to assist with detection logic, enrich events with contextual data and reduce alert noise. The platform also provides visibility into detection coverage and gaps, allowing security teams to understand where telemetry exists but is not actively monitored. Along with detection and investigation, Vega is expanding its platform to support response workflows within the same architecture, including support to allow analysts to move from alert identification to investigation and action without switching tools or exporting data to downstream systems. "Security operations should not require data centralization, migration and high cost just to function," explains Shay Sandler, co-founder and chief executive officer of Vega Security. "In complex cloud environments, this model simply can't keep up and often increases exposure to threat actors." "Vega is building an operating model that enables AI-native detection and response directly on top of the data enterprises already have," added Sandler. "This allows teams to move faster, reduce friction and simply achieve real outcomes." The company says that it has already signed multi-million-dollar contracts with global banks, leading healthcare organizations and Fortune 200 companies. The Series B round was led by Accel Partners LP, with Cyberstarts, Redpoint Ventures LP and Charles River Ventures LP also participating. "What stood out to us was not just the speed of adoption, but the size and significance of the customers committing to Vega early on," said Andrei Brasoveanu, a partner at Accel. "The company is showing that large enterprises are ready to move beyond legacy security analytics models and that Vega can execute against that demand masterfully." Vega's last funding before today was a Series A round of $65 million in September.