Emerging From Stealth
Cybersecurity startup Pluto Security emerged from stealth on October 13, 2026, announcing a total of $42 million in funding. The company specializes in securing artificial intelligence tools and AI agents created by employees inside enterprises.
The announcement appeared simultaneously in a TechCrunch report and the company's official press release. Pluto positions its platform as security technology built for the AI work environment: it tracks which AI tools employees use, what applications they build, and what risks emerge along the way.
Employees are not only using off-the-shelf tools — they are building new tools and agents themselves with the help of artificial intelligence. Pluto's mission is to secure exactly this process: the flow of AI tools being created inside the enterprise by its own staff.
Funding Structure: Seed and Series A
The $42 million came in two separate rounds. The first was an $8.5 million seed led by TLV Partners, with participation from the founders of cybersecurity company Armis. The second was a $34 million Series A led by Jump Capital, with Skinos, Ansa Capital and a number of angel investors participating.
Both rounds were announced on the day the company came out of stealth, bringing the total to $42 million. One year after its founding, Pluto has thus completed a two-stage financing. The funds will go toward further developing the platform that protects employee-built AI tools and agents inside enterprises.
Founders and Reach
Pluto was founded in 2025 by three people: CEO Shahar Bahat, Tal Ofer Regev and Gil Maman. All three founders bring deep cybersecurity experience — their careers run through Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Bridgecrew and Unit 8200 of the Israel Defense Forces.
According to the company, Pluto today protects more than 1 million endpoints worldwide. That figure rests on a customer base built while the company was still in stealth.
What the Platform Monitors
The Pluto platform operates on several fronts. It monitors the AI tools employees use in their daily work and analyzes the components those tools rely on — skills, extensions, MCP servers and other dependencies. The applications and agents being built are themselves kept under observation.
The system's standout capability is intervening while an agent is running. If an agent tries to go beyond the authority granted by the user, Pluto can stop the action or inject additional context into the session, requiring the agent to request confirmation. The intervention happens in real time — at the very moment the agent's action creates risk.
"We are shifting from monitoring user behavior to monitoring agent behavior," said Pluto CEO and co-founder Shahar Bahat.
This approach marks a departure from the era when traditional security tools only watched employees' actions: autonomous AI agents now sit at the center of control.
Biggest Source of Risk: Finance Departments
About 60% of the risks Pluto has identified among its clients trace back to tools built by non-developers through "vibe coding" — describing an idea in natural language and having artificial intelligence write the code.
Finance departments turned out to be the biggest source of such risk, followed by marketing and legal teams. Developers rank fourth on the list. In other words, the greatest risk comes not from professional developers but from business employees automating their tasks with AI — showing that security teams need to shift their attention from traditional IT departments to business units.
Customers, Revenue and the Plutonium Hub
Pluto started selling in April 2026 and quickly announced that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) had surpassed $2 million. The company now has more than 30 enterprise customers — among those named are Oscar Health, Workato, Sixt and AlphaSense. Pluto's team numbers about 40 people in the US and Israel.
As an unusual customer-acquisition channel, the startup launched Plutonium, a free hub that lets anyone check the risks associated with publicly available AI skills, connectors and add-ons. According to Bahat, 70% of Pluto's sales pipeline is now driven by inbound interest — customers find the company not directly, but through its free resource.
Further details are available in the company's official press release.
