Israeli cybersecurity startup Guardio Ltd. today announced it has raised $40 million in new funding at a $1.1 billion valuation.

Wiz co-founder and Chief Executive Assaf Rappaport joined the round alongside existing investors ION Crossover Partners, Union Tech Ventures, Vintage Investment Partners, Cerca Partners, and Emerge Ventures. The round brings the company’s total to date to $167 million, including an $80 million Series B led by ION in November.

The company employs artificial intelligence to bring enterprise-grade cybersecurity to consumers, protecting them from scams, phishing, malicious websites and identity theft risks with their browsing, email, texting and device use. Its core product is a detection engine that proactively flags or blocks risky links, fake login pages, dangerous downloads, and scam messages before users act on them.

The same AI that has become the mainstay of enterprise-level defenses also enables scammers and malicious actors to trick people into revealing sensitive information.

In simple terms, attackers can use AI to discover what will get users to click on risky links, type in passwords to a website that looks like a real site but is actually fake, or download and run a file that’s actually malware. Already, spammers and scammers can mass-produce websites that can get people to accidentally reveal passwords or account information, but it’s equally easy for AI to produce personalized emails or websites that look like they’re associated with the person, even if they’re malicious.

Guardio’s browser extension and mobile protection check sites and downloads in real time, warning about fake sites, malware, delivery pages, malicious extensions and suspicious browser behavior. It detects scam links and defends against modern AI-crafted impersonation and social engineering. It also watches for personal data tied to email monitoring addresses or phone numbers appearing in data breaches.

“Scammers stopped hacking computers years ago – they hack people, and with AI, it’s cheap and easy. Cybercrime is essentially democratized,” said Chief Executive and co-founder Amos Peled (pictured, right). “Nobody is losing their savings to a virus. People are losing savings to a scam that AI wrote, voiced and dialed — while their antivirus reports that their laptop is perfectly clean.”

The protection is geared toward consumers, not just enterprises, with plans offered for individuals, families and businesses. It protects people instead of devices, aiming to stop attacks before they affect the individual.

As a result, it’s not a stand-in for other layers of defense, but it’s also sitting in a position that’s often forgotten by the everyday person and business now that AI has lowered the cost and scale of personalizing individualized attacks. Now individual employees can be targeted by an AI bot to sneak behind the firewall, essentially bypassing the need to punch through a vulnerability or exploit.

According to FBI statistics, the bureau logged an average of almost 3,000 complaints per day last year, with around 22,000 of them confirmed as AI-related. Losses to cybercrime in the United States hit a record of $20.9 billion in the same period.

Photo: Omer Hacohen/Guardio