Artificial intelligence security startup Pillar Security Inc. announced today that it has raised $9 million in new funding to expand research and development and go-to-market efforts.

Founded in 2023, Pillar Security specializes in securing AI applications and infrastructure through the entire AI lifecycle, from development to production. Headquartered in Miami, Florida, with operations in Tel Aviv, Israel, Pillar focuses on providing adaptive security solutions tailored for AI-integrated software systems.

The company’s solutions seek to address the issue wherein, as organizations build and deploy AI-driven software systems, traditional cybersecurity tools and processes struggle to keep pace, creating critical protection gaps. AI-driven software systems also lead to AI-specific risks, such as evasion attacks, data poisoning, data privacy and intellectual property leakage.

Pillar argues that with these challenges, the need for a purpose-built AI security solution has never been more urgent. The company addresses the need head-on with an end-to-end security platform specifically designed for AI-integrated software systems.

“AI is fundamentally changing the way we build software — it doesn’t just add another step to traditional processes; it introduces an entirely new lifecycle,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Dor Sarig. “Pillar’s technology, backed by real-world AI threat intelligence, is built with this understanding, delivering a new class of protection designed explicitly for AI-related security risks.”

Pillar’s end-to-end platform is built to secure the entire AI lifecycle, adapting to the evolving threat landscape that comes with AI adoption. The platform works with existing code repositories, data infrastructures and AI and machine learning platforms to ensure that teams gain immediate value without needing to overhaul their workflows.

Once deployed, the platform automatically maps all AI-related assets across the organization, including models, datasets, prompts, notebooks and frameworks, to give security teams a clear view of their AI footprint.

Beyond visibility, Pillar also rigorously tests not only AI models but also the infrastructure, applications and agentic layers they depend on. The approach allows the platform to implement tailored, adaptive guardrails for each AI system, calibrated to its specific risk profile and business goals. The company says the result is a proactive defense mechanism that helps prevent security failures before they disrupt operations.

Shield Capital led the seed funding round, with Golden Ventures, Ground Up Ventures and other strategic angel investors also participating.

“As agentic AI systems are increasingly being deployed within businesses, hand in hand with an equally burgeoning threat surface, Pillar uniquely understands that securing software in the AI era requires more than incremental improvements,” said Shield Capital’s leading investor, Elias Manousos, who was formerly corporate vice president at Microsoft Corp. responsible for AI Copilot for Security and Threat Intelligence and a former CEO of RiskIQ Inc.

Image: Pillar Security