Cyera raised $400 million in a new investment round. This brings the company’s valuation to approximately $9 billion. The financing comes just six months after the previous round and confirms investors’ strong interest in AI and data security.
For Cyera, the capital injection is not only intended to scale up, but also to further develop a clear vision on AI security.
New York-based Cyera is positioning itself emphatically at the intersection of data and AI. While many security solutions still focus on networks, endpoints, and infrastructure, Cyera focuses on data as its central starting point. This is no coincidence. As organizations deploy generative and autonomous AI systems, the attack surface is increasingly shifting to the data on which those systems run.
AI requires sensitive data
According to the company, the next phase of AI adoption will be dominated by the use of sensitive business data. The first wave of AI mainly revolved around public datasets, but it is access to internal data that makes AI truly valuable for enterprises. At the same time, this significantly increases the risks. Autonomous AI agents can take more actions and make more decisions in a short period of time than humans ever could, leading to an explosion of data and potential errors or misuse.
Cyera argues that traditional security models cannot keep up with this development. Classic controls have little insight into how AI uses data. Organizations often respond to this by blocking access, which slows down AI initiatives, or by accepting risks without sufficient insight. According to Cyera, neither of these approaches is sustainable at scale.
Governance is the weak link in agentic AI
This analysis is in line with warnings from analysts. IDC expects agentic AI to be widely deployed in the coming years, but that governance will lag behind. Without clear control mechanisms, this could lead to disruptions and security incidents at large organizations. Cyera is attempting to address this problem with a platform that brings together data protection, data breach prevention, access management, and identity context.
The company started with AI-native data security posture management for data at rest and expanded this to data in motion and data in use by AI systems. With the introduction of AI Guardian, Cyera is also focusing on detecting shadow AI and securing AI use in chatbots, internal applications, and external services. Based on customer experiences, the company concludes that controlled and reliable data access is the foundation of effective AI security.
The new funding will be used to further expand that platform. Blackstone led the round, with participation from existing investors such as Accel, Sequoia Capital, and Lightspeed.