Artificial intelligence-native security company Straiker launched today with an announcement that it has raised $21 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners LP and Bain Capital Ventures.

The company introduced solutions designed to safeguard the full range of enterprise AI applications, from AI-native apps to agents. Straiker aims to help organizations confidently deploy AI by addressing critical security and safety risks with the AI apps enterprises are building and deploying. Its solutions include automated, red-team-level assessment within the company’s runtime safety, and security guardrails for continuous analysis and automated blocking.

The company says its solutions harness intelligence from each layer of the AI application stack — including user, models, applications, agents, identity and data — to ensure precise assessment results and industry-leading protection.

Introduced today in general availability are two AI-native models. The first, Ascend AI, performs an in-depth attack simulation using an advanced, curated set of AI-specific safety and security threats. The second, Defend AI, extends protection beyond prompt-level threats to shield AI applications and agents from a wide range of security and safety threats.

Both modules are powered by the Straiker AI Engine, which uses a mix of small, fine-tuned models that reason across intelligence from every layer of the AI applications stack. The engine enables customizations to address unique safety and security requirements with an architecture designed to preserve privacy.

The service is supported by Straiker’s STAR team, a dedicated AI threat intelligence team that investigates the latest model and autonomous agent risks and researches the tactics, techniques and procedures being employed by adversaries.

The company already has customers using its services, including People.ai Inc., Coupa Software Inc. and DirecTV LLC.

“AI is rapidly becoming one of the most significant cybersecurity risks. Enterprises must act now to stay ahead of these emerging risks and make AI security a top priority,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Ankur Shah. “Straiker is the only AI-native platform that delivers real-time protection against attacks aimed at each layer of AI apps and agents.”

Image: Straiker