Qevlar AI, a Paris-based cyber security startup that uses AI to investigate cyber hacks and detect potential cyber threats to businesses, has successfully raised a €4.5 million seed round led by EQT Ventures. The round also saw participation from global leading angels in tech and AI such as Olivier Pomel, CEO of Datadog, Mehdi Ghissassi, Director of Product at Google DeepMind, and Florian Douetteau CEO of Dataiku, Edouard Viot, VP Product of GitGuardian and Tarik Dadi, CEO of Qantev.
The fresh funds will help Qevlar AI to continue to grow its team and further invest in the product to continue to be one step ahead of cybercrime.
Cyber-attacks are increasingly having a sizable financial impact on businesses, research shows a 38% year-on-year increase in 2022, compared to 2021. Meanwhile, a fifth of US and European businesses have warned that a severe cyber-attack nearly left them financially insolvent. Generative AI is breeding better-equipped threat actors posing an unprecedented danger. Meanwhile, many enterprises still depend heavily on human detection methods which can strain and overwhelm security teams dealing with a high volume of alerts. These traditional automation solutions are also costly to set up and cannot proactively identify security threats. Businesses’ existing cyber defences are unprepared to deal with this new environment and businesses across all sectors are left exposed.
Ahmed Achchak, Co-Founder and CEO, said: “Organizations are confronting a rise in the complexity and number of attacks, amid a shortage of available human resources. Driven by fast-evolving technology, threat actors are leveraging machine learning to sophisticate phishing attempts and infiltrate systems deemed previously safe. Businesses need to react quickly and Qevlar AI is here to help them do so smartly and efficiently.”
Qevlar AI has built a generative AI solution to replace manual cybersecurity investigation and detection processes with automation. It is tailor-built for enterprise environments, which often grapple with complex security challenges. At the heart of Qevlar AI’s solution is the autonomous investigation API, which facilitates rapid and automated analysis of potential security incidents, eliminating the bottleneck of manual intervention and executing investigation tasks in under a minute, which could take human experts hours to complete. Its proprietary models create security playbooks based on the alerts they investigate, continuously enhancing its defences.
Qevlar AI technology seamlessly integrates with any existing security infrastructure an organization has in place, allowing for swift integration. Businesses leveraging Qevlar AI have experienced a 30% boost in security operations efficiency, which will continue to grow in the coming months as the technology matures.
“We believe in the transformative power of AI in enhancing the capabilities of cybersecurity professionals and Security Operations Centers (SOCs). Qevlar AI’s innovative approach addresses the pressing challenges in SOC management, offering a promising solution to the long-standing quest for effective automation,” said Julien Hobeika, Partner at EQT Ventures. “Qevlar AI’s proprietary AI technology promises to alleviate the burden on analysts, minimize human errors, and fortify responses, meeting the crucial demands of our increasingly digital and security-conscious world.”
