Why We Invested in Twine
Of all the possibilities that the GenAI era offers, one of the most impactful is the idea that this new technology will change the job market forever. Abilities that were once high in demand will be less so; newly intelligent agents capable of addressing certain tasks will take over responsibilities once held by human employees. These human employees will need to evolve their skill sets, moving to higher-level thinking to advance innovation, creativity, and teamwork, while utilizing and even managing a new “digital workforce” to maximize productivity and execution. It is a genuine paradigm shift, changing the nature of work as we know it: how we staff and scale organizations and find efficiency and effectiveness in the future. For humans, it could be one massive step towards “work smarter, not harder,” potentially making everyone’s work more interesting as more mundane tasks are shifted to “automated employees.”
Of all functional departments, cybersecurity seems particularly ripe for this kind of revolutionary workforce augmentation, changing the nature of security organizations and what the day-to-day schedules and to-do lists of cyber employees (the human kind) will entail. Cybersecurity is a sector long-plagued by employee shortages, with a continually overworked, under-resourced, and incredibly stressed workforce. At the same time, it’s a community full of tech-friendly early adopters, ready to imagine the new possibilities that AI will bring to reinforce existing labor, ease their burden, and move them to higher value / higher interest work. These factors make cyber a compelling place to embrace the promise of force-multiplying digital employees, benefiting human workers while increasing the effectiveness of a company’s cyber defenses.
Our latest investment in Twine, led by Benny Porat and his highly skilled team (all previously core team members at multi-billion-dollar-valued cyber unicorn Claroty, which Porat co-founded), aims to address this immense opportunity. Twine’s platform equips cybersecurity teams with digital employees who work alongside cyber teams to complete their security objectives. These digital employees will help bridge the considerable skills gap within the cybersecurity sector, reducing insecurities and vulnerabilities (two-thirds of organizations face additional risks because of cybersecurity skills shortages). They will help cyber teams address the sheer proliferation and increasing sophistication of cyber threats more efficiently.
Twine’s long-term mission is to develop various digital cybersecurity employees, each designed to address specific, critical cybersecurity objectives. The first area to be addressed, however, is Identity Access Management (IAM). Identity-based threats are a critical blind spot for many organizations, with gaps in visibility, permissions, and adequate governance exposing companies to significant risks. Twine’s “Alex,” the first of many digital cybersecurity employees, is trained to understand and handle identity management tasks from start to finish to help organizations maximize their performance. In the words of his creator, “Alex works on your team’s behalf to orchestrate the entire identity and access management process by planning, approving, and fully executing your Identity workflows. He uses analytical capabilities to forensically investigate, find answers, and automate tasks to handle every stage of work, including the most complicated exceptions.”
Twine represents a bold vision of how cyber teams will be crafted in this brave new world, built by some of the most experienced founders in the industry. Founders Benny Porat, Nadav Erez, Omri Green, and Justin Woody are an incredible team to back. These individuals bring invaluable experience from their time at Claroty. At this multi-billion-dollar cyber unicorn, co-founder and CTO Benny Porat led the company to achieve over $100 million in annual recurring revenue, serving over a thousand global customers. From day one, we’ve been impressed at how they work together, driving hard at the critical milestone of launching out of stealth with harmony and mutual passion. We are also pleased to be joined in the round by Deepak Jeevankumar of Dell Technologies Capital, an important co-investor with whom we have partnered before.
In the years ahead, we will see Twine become an indispensable resource to organizations worldwide. Beyond addressing the cybersecurity talent shortage, Twine will transform companies’ preparation for and prevention of cyber threats. While the cybersecurity skills gap won’t be closed overnight, Twine is paving the way for a more secure digital future through the power of human and machine collaboration and the vision of this incredible founding team. And, hopefully, cyber teams will be a little less stressed and less exhausted thanks to the Twine team’s hard work and digital employees like “Alex,” who can share their burden and lend a hand.
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