Protect AI, a startup that specializes in strengthening the security of AI systems, recently announced that it has successfully raised $35 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from notable investors such as Salesforce Ventures, Acrew Capital, boldstart ventures, Knollwood Capital, and Pelion Ventures. This latest tranche is more than double the size of Protect AI's previous seed round, which closed in December last year, and brings the total amount raised by the startup to $48. 5 million. The funds will be used to enhance the capabilities of Protect AI's platform, expand their research efforts, and launch new open source projects. According to co-founder and CEO Ian Swanson, the raised capital will ensure the company's resilience for years to come. Swanson also shared that Protect AI plans to expand its workforce from 25 to 40 employees by the end of this year. Swanson, along with co-founder Daryan Dehghanpisheh, launched Protect AI in 2022. Prior to that, both Swanson and Dehghanpisheh had gained experience at AWS and Oracle, and were involved in the launch of DataScience. com, an AI development platform that was later acquired by Oracle.

Protect AI's mission revolves around helping customers build a safer AI-powered world, with a focus on addressing the security vulnerabilities associated with AI systems. While there is currently limited evidence of widespread attacks on AI models, Swanson believes that as AI is adopted more widely in sensitive industries such as finance and healthcare, the risks will inevitably increase. Protect AI offers various services to strengthen the security of AI systems. One of their flagship tools, AI Radar, provides visibility into the components used in building an AI model and generates a "machine learning bill of materials" (MLBOM) to identify potential vulnerabilities. Protect AI also offers tools to mitigate specific types of AI attacks, such as prompt injection attacks and issues related to Jupyter Notebook files. The company aims to transition from traditional machine learning operations (MLOps) to ML security operations (MLSecOps) within large enterprises. While there are competitors in the field, Protect AI has managed to establish a niche for itself with notable private and public sector customers in industries such as finance, healthcare, life sciences, and energy.