Straiker launched publicly on March 27, 2025, in Sunnyvale, California, with $21 million in funding from Lightspeed Ventures and Bain Capital Ventures. The company introduced an AI-native security solution designed to safeguard AI applications and agents in enterprises, focusing on mitigating critical security and safety risks.
The solution aims to address emerging threats like mass data exfiltration, supply chain attacks, and autonomous chaos. These risks stem from exploiting AI’s language and reasoning vulnerabilities.
Ankur Shah, Co-founder and CEO of Straiker, highlighted the expanding threat landscape. “Enterprises must act now to stay ahead of these emerging risks and make AI security a top priority,” Shah stated.
Straiker’s platform offers automated, red-team-level assessments integrated with runtime safety and security guardrails. This continuous analysis enables real-time protection against multi-layer threats.
The platform’s strategy includes integrating intelligence from multiple layers, including user, models, application, agents, identity, and data. This layered approach ensures precise assessment and protection across the board.
Straiker’s launch includes two AI-native modules designed to robustly address critical AI security concerns:
- Ascend AI: This module provides in-depth attack simulation using a curated set of AI-specific threats. Ascend AI offers a one-time risk assessment or continuous testing to ensure proactive detection and resolution of root issues. Users can choose between a one-off assessment or ongoing monitoring to address potential threats before they emerge.
- Defend AI: This module goes beyond prompt-level threats to shield AI applications and agents from a wide array of security and safety threats across various layers. It offers automated threat blocking, reacting dynamically to risks detected by Ascend AI and mitigating risks.
Both modules are powered by the Straiker AI Engine, leveraging fine-tuned models that reason across intelligence from every AI application layer. This design promotes precision and low latency for quick app performance. Straiker’s infrastructure secures privacy concerns by customizing for unique safety requirements.
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Straiker also hosts the STAR team, a dedicated AI security research team evaluating model and autonomous agent risks, tracking adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures.
Customer endorsements highlight Straiker’s impact:
- “Straiker has been pivotal in identifying and addressing the Generative AI-native risks within our AI platform” – Aman Sirohi, CISO, People AI.
- “Straiker helped remove the security blindspot in our B2B AI Application with their unique approach with its Ascend AI product” – Ken Ricketts, CISO at Coupa.
- “Straiker enabled us to launch our consumer-facing AI application with confidence. With Real-time protection for security and safety, we didn’t have to choose between user experience and robust protection.” – CISO at a leading Fintech firm.
- “AI security & safety risks were a principal concern getting ready to launch our customer-facing AI experiences. Straiker was instrumental in providing a holistic security & safety assessment of our application with specific recommendations on how to fix those issues.” – Dan Garcia, CISO, Enterprise DB.
- “We have several AI initiatives internally. Straiker was instrumental in providing a holistic security & safety assessment of critical homegrown applications.” – Gulshan Kumar, Head of Technology Architecture, DirecTV.
Investors also expressed their support:
- “The AI Age requires someone to rethink security and take an AI-native approach fundamentally. It will be the next frontier in Cyber. We were active in this space for a long time, waiting for the right team and technology until we came across Straiker. We couldn’t be more pleased with the progress the all-star Straiker team has made in such a short time.” – Arif Janmohammed, Partner at Lightspeed Ventures.
- “I have been in the industry for the last 5 decades as an operator and investor. I have never been more excited about cyber as I am now with AI. Straiker has the right team and technology to disrupt the entire cybersecurity industry with AI” – Enrique Salem, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures.
Straiker was founded by seasoned AI and cybersecurity veterans. It aims to secure every stage of the AI application lifecycle and provide protection for third-party AI applications.
Considering the escalating threat environment today, where AI applications are virtually inevitable in business strategy, Straiker’s emergence should raise eyebrows among enterprises, particularly those content with conventional security measures.
It should be fascinating to monitor which businesses will integrate Straiker’s insightful, nuanced consultancy into their defensive mechanism, compared to those who will stick with fallible, mainstream systems.
Security is no longer just a reactive measure. With products like straiker’s ascend AI and defend AI, enterprises may also view security as a proactive initiative, thereby securing the AI apps and agents to not only implement resilient countermeasures but also add value to business security.
