Observed Signal · Feb 18, 2026 · Funding · Source: techcrunch · Impact: 2/5 · Sentiment: Neutral
Venice Aims to Disrupt CyberArk in 18 Months
Venice, a 35-person Israeli-American identity and access management startup founded about two years ago, emerged from stealth after raising $25 million in a Series A led by IVP with participation from Index Ventures. Co-founded and led by Rotem Lurie (ex‑Microsoft PM and early Axis Security product hire) with Or Vaknin as CTO, Venice offers a platform that consolidates privileged access management across on‑premises servers, SaaS and cloud infrastructure for humans and non‑human agents. The company says AI‑driven automation cuts typical enterprise implementations from months or years to roughly a week‑and‑a‑half and claims early deployments have replaced legacy vendors at Fortune 500/1000 customers (unnamed on record). Investors and backers include IVP, Index Ventures, Assaf Rappaport and Raaz Herzberg. The story raises the question of whether Venice can scale against well‑funded incumbents like CyberArk and Okta.
A venture‑backed startup (Venice) raised a $25M Series A to tackle enterprise privileged access management across hybrid environments and AI agents; relevant to identity and security buyers but not immediately industry‑shifting for AdTech/MarTech.
Track IVP Signals & Market Shifts in Real-Time
Polaris7 autonomous intelligence agents track regulatory filings, primary sources, executive changes, and deal flow 24/7. Create your free Explorer workspace to monitor these entities.
Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Venice raised $25 million in Series A funding in December, led by IVP with participation from Index Ventures.
- Venice is a roughly 35‑person Israeli‑American startup founded about two years ago.
- Rotem Lurie is a co‑founder and CEO; she previously worked as a product manager at Microsoft and was the first product hire at Axis Security.
- Venice's platform consolidates privileged access management across on‑premises, SaaS and cloud environments for humans and non‑human entities and uses AI automation to reduce implementation time to about 1.5 weeks.
- Investors and supporters mentioned include IVP, Index Ventures, Assaf Rappaport and Raaz Herzberg; Or Vaknin is co‑founder and CTO.
Connected Companies & Entities
6 Entities mappedOntology Mapping & Concepts
Related Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
Venice AI raises $65M Series A, becomes unicorn
Venice AI, a privacy-first AI platform that gives users access to more than 200 models while preserving client-side privacy, has raised a $65 million Series A at a $1 billion valuation. The round, Venice’s first external fundraise, was led by crypto-focused venture firm Dragonfly with participation from Coinbase Ventures, North Island Ventures and others. CEO Erik Voorhees said the company is already profitable, with annualized run-rate revenues above $70 million, more than 3 million active users, ~1.7 million API calls per day and 850,000 unique website visitors. Venice hosts open-source models in its own data centers while routing queries to closed-source models; user input is encrypted client-side and proxied so Venice stores no user data. The company plans to use the funding to buy GPUs and build data centers to improve margins.
Oak raises $60M to fix AI-era identity management
Israeli startup Oak has emerged from stealth with a generally available identity product after raising $60 million in seed funding. Co-founded by Shai Morag and Tal Marom, Oak offers a unified control plane and an "AI connector framework" that maps access to actual app usage and removes unneeded permissions in real time. The company says its solution is already deployed by enterprise clients, built a 50-person team while in stealth, and is hiring—especially in the U.S. The $60M round was co-led by Accel, CRV and Greylock Partners, with participation from AlphaDrive Ventures, Hetz Ventures and angel investors. Oak positions itself as an AI-native replacement for legacy IAM tools amid growing concerns that AI agents increase identity and access risks.
VCs Back AI‑Native Cybersecurity Startups
Venture investors are increasingly funding AI-native cybersecurity startups addressing new risks introduced by agentic AI. Startups are using AI agents for continuous penetration testing, vulnerability discovery, governance, and agent identity verification. Reported financings include Xbow (Sequoia-backed) in talks for a round valuing it just over $1 billion, Cylake (founded by Nir Zuk) raising a $45M seed led by Greylock, and Cogent Security raising a $42M Series A led by Bain Capital Ventures. Investors cited identity verification for autonomous agents and scaled automated attacks as key market opportunities. Anthropic’s launch of Claude Code Security—an autonomous code-scanning tool—briefly pressured cybersecurity incumbents’ stocks (CrowdStrike, Zscaler), highlighting both disruption risk and investor interest in next‑generation security firms. Industry observers expect winners to emerge over several years as enterprise AI infrastructure matures.
Track Real-Time Market Signals & Shifts
Set up custom watchlists to receive automated, evidence-grounded executive digests whenever material signals or shifts occur across your tracked landscape.