Ent raises USD $100 million seed round led by Decibel

Ent has raised USD $100 million in seed funding in a round led by Decibel.

The cybersecurity company also emerged from stealth as it disclosed the financing, which included Sequoia, Crosspoint Capital, Craft Ventures, Shield Capital, Felicis and In-Q-Tel.

Ent is building what it describes as an intent-aware endpoint security platform designed to assess the behaviour of human users and AI agents at the point of use. The software can be delivered as a software-as-a-service product or self-hosted in a customer's cloud, and runs through a lightweight agent on endpoints.

The company is entering a market where security vendors are adapting tools built for traditional endpoint detection to workplaces that now include AI assistants, automated agents, and broader data access across devices and applications. Ent argues that conventional endpoint detection and response, and extended detection and response, can spot malicious code and post-execution behaviour but miss risks that appear to be ordinary work activity without wider context.

According to Ent, the platform is already deployed with Global 2000 customers in hospitality, financial services and defence. Those customers use the product for insider risk detection, AI governance, data loss prevention, threat prevention and incident investigation.

Ent was founded by Elias Manousos and Brandon Dixon, who previously co-founded RiskIQ, which Microsoft acquired. According to the company, the founding team also includes people involved in Microsoft Security Copilot.

Shift in focus

Ent's pitch reflects a broader shift in cybersecurity toward preventing risky actions before they are completed rather than investigating them afterward. As companies adopt generative AI tools and give software agents greater autonomy, security teams are under pressure to monitor not only malicious software but also whether legitimate users and systems are acting in line with internal rules.

Ent says its product applies customer-defined policies and intervenes in real time before an incident occurs. It is generally available for Windows, macOS, Linux and browser-extension deployments.

"Security has been stuck in a reactive loop for over a decade," said Elias Manousos, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ent.

"AI is transforming how work happens. Work now happens across people, agents, applications, data, and local runtimes, and risk often begins while everything still looks legitimate. The critical questions no existing product can answer are, 'Is the user or agent intent aligned with the objectives of the business? And if not, how fast can it be stopped?' This round accelerates our work to bring intent-aware prevention to every enterprise securing human and AI-driven work," Manousos said.

Investor backing

The size of the seed round stands out at a time when cybersecurity investors continue to favour companies tied to AI, particularly those focused on new workplace risks rather than older network perimeter models. Backing from established venture firms and In-Q-Tel also points to investor interest in security products that could be used in both commercial and public-sector settings.

"AI has been a killer app for hackers and offensive researchers, but the industry is waiting for a novel defensive solution that can keep up with the modern era of LLMs," said Jon Sakoda, Founding Partner at Decibel.

"Ent has reimagined what is possible to protect the endpoint by using specialized AI models and adaptive policy enforcement to detect and prevent malicious activity in real time. It's a game changer for cybersecurity teams that need a paradigm shift to defend their workforce against LLM-based attacks," Sakoda said.

Sequoia framed the company's approach as part of a broader move away from relying on signals gathered only after an action has taken place.

"For a decade, endpoint security has relied on signals that arrive after the user's action is complete," said Konstantin Buhler, Partner at Sequoia.

"By running AI reasoning directly on the device, Ent moves from detection to prevention at the moment of decision. That shift is where the next era of endpoint defense will be built," Buhler said.

Public sector use

In-Q-Tel highlighted demand from agencies trying to keep pace with AI adoption while maintaining oversight and investigation records.

"We are working with agencies where AI adoption is outpacing the ability of most enterprises to govern it, and where forensic clarity matters as much as prevention. Ent gives them both," said Steve Bowsher, Chief Executive Officer of IQT.

"They can see what people are doing with AI in the moment, and they have a comprehensive record of what happened on every device," Bowsher said.

Ent says the new funding will be used to hire across engineering and go-to-market roles, and to further product development in AI governance, threat prevention, integrations and endpoint intelligence. Its advisers include former Chief Information Security Officers from Google, Aetna and MassMutual, as well as former senior officials from the NSA and Microsoft Azure Cloud Security.