A Tel Aviv cybersecurity startup that has been quietly developing artificial intelligence models designed to fend off AI-powered attacks said Monday it raised $60 million in seed funding, joining a wave of well-capitalized companies betting that machine-speed threats require machine-speed defenses.
Corma Labs, which emerged from stealth with backing from Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, and Coatue, is building what it describes as foundation models purpose-built for autonomous cybersecurity. The August 10 announcement positions the company among the largest defensive-AI raises this year, though it trails Kai's $125 million March round and follows closely behind Artemis, which brought in $70 million in April, according to data from Startup Nation Finder.
Corma declined to disclose its valuation.
The company's pitch centers on what CEO and founder Alon Pluda calls "superintelligence for defensive cybersecurity." Unlike general-purpose AI models adapted for security tasks, Corma says its technology was designed from inception to work as an AI workforce alongside human security teams. The models integrate with existing security infrastructure and can be deployed entirely on-premises, then fine-tuned on a customer's own security data.
In materials on its website, Corma claims its models "far surpass every general-purpose model on defensive cybersecurity tasks" while running orders of magnitude faster and cheaper. The company has not provided independent benchmarking to substantiate those assertions.
Corma incorporated in Israel in May 2025 and operated in stealth for more than a year before going public with its funding. Investor disclosures on Startup Nation Finder suggest the $60 million represents at least the third tranche of capital: Coatue and Khosla Ventures each listed stealth-mode seed entries in August 2025, totaling $20 million and $15 million respectively. The company now employs exactly 20 people and operates from offices on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, according to Finder data last updated in early August.
The raise lands Corma in an increasingly crowded field. AI-native security startups collectively pulled in more than $500 million during the first half of 2026, driven by mounting concern that traditional defenses cannot match the speed and adaptability of automated attacks.
San Jose-based Kai led the pack in March with its $125 million round from Evolution Equity Partners and others, positioning itself as an "agentic AI cybersecurity platform designed to autonomously reason, act, and adapt at machine speed." Artemis followed in April with combined seed and Series A funding led by Felicis, First Round, and Brightmind for what it calls AI-versus-AI detection and automated response. Then came Glow in July, which operates offices in both Palo Alto and Tel Aviv and secured a $180 million Series A at a $1.2 billion valuation from backers including Sequoia, Cyberstarts, Greenoaks, Redpoint, and Index Ventures.
"AI has ushered in a new era for cybersecurity, disrupting traditional defense while enabling new, automated attacks humans alone can't match," Richard Seewald, founder and managing partner at Evolution Equity Partners, said when Kai's round was announced.
Corma's website asserts that "the world's most important organizations already use the Corma workforce," though the company does not identify customers or offer case studies. Its homepage features logos of its financial backers but provides little detail about product capabilities or deployment timelines. The company operates from its active domain corma.ai, while corma-labs.com currently displays only a "coming soon" placeholder.
Israeli tech outlets Geektime and CTech covered the funding announcement Monday, citing the $60 million seed for defensive cyber foundation models. Whether Corma can deliver on its performance claims, and whether customers will trust autonomous AI to make split-second security decisions, remains an open question in a market that has seen plenty of bold promises and few proven results at scale.
