Cybersecurity startup Vega has secured $65 million in funding to advance its AI-powered platform, which aims to replace traditional Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems. The investment, which brings the company's valuation to $400 million, was led by Accel with participation from Redpoint, Cyberstarts, and CRV.
Founded by former Intel employees Shay Sandler and Eli Rozen, Vega is developing a new approach to threat detection that analyzes security data at its source. This method is designed to overcome the limitations of older systems that struggle with the massive data volumes generated by modern cloud infrastructures.
Key Takeaways
- Total Funding: Vega secured $65 million through a combination of seed and Series A funding rounds.
- Company Valuation: The latest investment values the Israeli-American startup at $400 million.
- Core Technology: The company's platform, a Security Analytics Mesh (SAM), analyzes data in place, avoiding the need for costly centralized storage.
- Market Problem: Vega aims to replace legacy SIEM tools, which it argues are inefficient and expensive for handling modern data loads.
Addressing the Failures of Traditional Security Tools
For years, enterprises have relied on SIEM platforms to centralize and analyze security alerts from various sources. However, Vega contends that this model is no longer viable in an era where companies generate terabytes of data daily. The process of moving all security data to a single repository has become slow and prohibitively expensive.
This reliance on an outdated architecture creates significant problems for security teams. According to Vega, it leads to security blind spots, prolonged investigations, and an inability to pinpoint the root cause of security incidents. The financial impact on organizations can amount to millions of dollars annually.
Shay Sandler, CEO of Vega, highlighted the operational strain on security professionals. He stated that teams often spend the majority of their time just trying to locate the right data, a task complicated by a high volume of false positive alerts.
“The average enterprise security team spends around two-thirds of its time on searching for data... The teams aren’t to blame; it’s the broken, costly architecture,” Sandler explained.
SIEM Inefficiency by the Numbers
A report from AI security firm CardinalOps last year supports the critique of SIEM systems. The study, which analyzed 3,000 detection rules and 1.2 million log sources, found that SIEM tools could identify only 19% of MITRE ATT&CK techniques. This was despite having access to data covering up to 87% of those same threats, highlighting a significant gap between data collection and effective threat detection.
A New Model for Security Analytics
Vega's solution is a platform it calls a Security Analytics Mesh, or SAM. This system takes a federated approach, which means it analyzes security data directly where it is stored, whether in cloud services, SaaS applications, or on-premise legacy systems. This eliminates the need to transfer vast quantities of data to a central location.
By analyzing data at the source, Vega's platform aims to provide several key advantages:
- Faster Investigations: Security teams can access and analyze information more quickly without waiting for data transfers.
- Automated Gap Detection: The system is designed to automatically identify vulnerabilities in a company's security coverage.
- Real-Time Optimization: It can adjust and improve a company's security posture based on existing policies and real-time findings.
The platform also incorporates generative AI, allowing security analysts to use natural language to query logs. This feature provides recommended next steps to resolve issues, simplifying complex security tasks and reducing the noise from false positives so teams can focus on genuine threats.
Investor Confidence and Market Traction
The $65 million investment signals strong confidence from the venture capital community in Vega's approach. The funding was distributed across an unannounced seed round and the recent Series A round. Accel, a prominent venture firm, led the investment.
Andrei Brasoveanu, a partner at Accel, believes the era of traditional SIEM platforms is coming to an end. He described them as costly and ineffective in the face of modern data volumes and AI-driven cyber threats.
“The solution is to decouple threat detection from the storage of SIEM data, and that’s exactly what Vega is doing,” Brasoveanu said. “Shay, Eli and the Vega Security team are demonstrating clear ROI for enterprises via cost savings and [improved] operational efficiency.”
Company Profile: Vega
Founded in 2024, Vega operates with a team of approximately 60 employees across its offices in Tel Aviv and New York City. The co-founders, Shay Sandler and Eli Rozen, bring experience from Intel Corp. Sandler also previously served in Unit 8200, the Israeli Defense Forces' elite cybersecurity and intelligence unit.
Future Ambitions and Customer Base
While Vega has not publicly disclosed the exact number of its customers, the company states it is already working with several Fortune 500 companies. Its client roster reportedly includes some of the world's leading banks and a major global healthcare provider, indicating early adoption in critical sectors.
Looking ahead, Sandler has ambitious goals for the company. He aims for Vega to become a household name in the cybersecurity industry, joining the ranks of established leaders like Palo Alto Networks Inc., CyberArk Software Ltd., and Wiz Inc.
With its new funding and a technology designed for the modern data landscape, Vega is positioned to challenge the established norms of enterprise security operations. The company's success will depend on its ability to convince large organizations to move away from the deeply entrenched SIEM systems they have used for decades.
