Cybersecurity startup Cylake Inc. launched today with an announcement that it had raised $45 million in funding to further develop its artificial intelligence-driven platform.

Founded by Nir Zuk, Wilson Xu and Ehud (Udi) Shamir (pictured), veterans of Palo Alto Networks Inc. and SentinelOne Inc., Cylake is developing a cybersecurity platform designed for organizations that require full control over their operational and security on-premises or in private cloud environments with full data sovereignty.

The company’s approach centers on an AI-native architecture that keeps security data and analytics within the customer’s controlled environment while aggregating telemetry from across infrastructure, applications and security systems. The offering differs from other security tools that rely on cloud-hosted analytics platforms that centralize telemetry outside an organization’s infrastructure. It can conflict with regulatory requirements or internal policies around data sovereignty.

The platform operates by collecting operational and security data from sources such as network infrastructure, endpoints, cloud workloads and security tools and consolidating it into a unified data layer. The data is processed locally within the customer’s environment using machine learning models and automated analysis workflows designed to examine system activity and identify abnormal patterns.

Data sovereignty is key to the offering. The platform processes information within on-premises or private infrastructure deployments to maintain control over sensitive datasets, rather than exporting logs and telemetry to external analysis services.

Cylake’s platform provides visibility across interconnected infrastructure components by correlating events and telemetry streams from multiple sources. Then it before analyzes activity across datasets to detect potential security incidents, generate alerts and assist with investigation workflows. Complementary automated analysis components evaluate event relationships, track activity patterns and provide context around system behavior to allow security teams to investigate incidents using data drawn from across their operational environment.

The platform is pitched as ideal for organizations that operate in environments where data movement and external processing are restricted, including government agencies, critical infrastructure operators and regulated industries such as finance and healthcare.

“Cybersecurity is constantly evolving and sometimes new challenges demand completely new approaches,” said Chief Executive Nir Zuk. “Cylake is for institutions where maintaining full control over data and operations is not optional.”

The seed funding round was led by Greylock Partners, with “additional experienced technology investors” also participating.

“The next generation of cybersecurity will be AI-native, agentic and built on holistic data and context,” said Asheem Chandna, a partner at Greylock Partners. “Cylake is focused on a segment of the market where security must operate under full control to meet regulatory and operational reality.”

Photo: Cylake