After meeting at Harvard Business School, businessmen Al Yang and Adar Arnon discovered they had a passion for cybersecurity.
“We’ve seen an evolving business environment that brought along an unprecedented need for improved security processes,” Arnon told Eltrys. The value of security has grown dramatically; for purchasers of technology, it is now non-negotiable.
During the epidemic, Yang and Arnon founded SafeBase, which gained admission into the accelerator program at Y Combinator after deciding to make this passion more than just a passing fancy.
On Tuesday, SafeBase announced the completion of a $33 million Series B round, led by Touring Capital. Companies often conduct security questionnaires before purchasing new software, and the firm assists clients in answering them. Something about governance and compliance.
Teams may need weeks or even months to complete security questionnaires for more complicated applications. Arnon, however, contends that SafeBase can save time via automation and artificial intelligence.
SafeBase uses AI models specifically trained on security documentation use cases to read, interpret, and then automatically answer security questionnaires. “Our technology alleviates the agony of the laborious security review process by enabling security, governance, risk, compliance, and revenue teams,” he said.
As a skeptic of artificial intelligence, I questioned Arnon about the veracity of these models; AI is, after all, a well-known lying machine. He stated that a combination of large and small language models, which offer “greater answer coverage,” enhances the system’s performance. Enjoy it as you see fit.
Apart from the customized models, SafeBase offers dashboards with insights and statistics on the security posture of the organization, along with an engine that enables a business to assign “rules-based behavior” for customer access.
SafeBase offers more than just automated security questionnaires and review tools. Conveyor, which got $12.5 million not so long ago, Kintent, and Quilt—which says it can automate security and due diligence checks as well—are rivals.
Not that concerned, Arnon seemed. Perhaps this is due to SafeBase’s 700-company client list, which includes Palantir, LinkedIn, Asana, and Instacart.
In the last two years, SafeBase has grown dramatically, according to Arnon. Customers are very happy with the product, and adoption is still picking up speed. The corporation gains from better visibility across its vendor network as more and more large clients open trust centers, which eliminates the need for tens of thousands of manual security assessments.
55 people work at San Francisco-based SafeBase.
Along with angel investors like former Salesforce chief trust officer Jim Alkove, the company’s Series B included strategic investor Zoom Ventures (Zoom’s corporate venture arm), NEA, Y Combinator, Comcast Ventures, and Cerca Partners. With it, SafeBase has raised over $50 million overall, of which Arnon claims a sizable amount will go into team expansion.
