Sequoia Partners with Cymphony to Secure Enterprise AI Agent Adoption

Sequoia Partners with Cymphony to Secure Enterprise AI Agent Adoption Sequoia Capital announced it has co-led the Series A round for Cymphony, a platform designed to resolve enterprise AI security bottlenecks by mapping and controlling the data access permissions of autonomous agents. Security and governance concerns stall enterprise AI deployments, with 40% of enterprises projected to demote or decommission autonomous agents by next year. Legacy security tools separate identity management from data security, failing to determine real-time data reach for AI agents acting on behalf of employees. Cymphony graphs how both humans and AI agents interact across enterprise systems, automating access remediation rather than merely generating alerts. Founded by Israeli Talpiot alumni Shy Dekel, Idan Berkovits, and Edi Gotlieb, Cymphony's customers include KKR, Syngenta, Cass Information Systems, Athennian, and Sequoia. The Security Bottleneck for Autonomous Agents Enterprise AI adoption remains largely confined to pilot programs because organizations lack visibility into what systems and data autonomous agents can access and what actions they perform. Unlike human workers, AI agents can be provisioned rapidly, operate continuously, and reach across numerous systems simultaneously. Because legacy security stacks separate data leak monitoring from identity access management under the assumption that actors are human, they cannot effectively govern agents that inherit permissions across scattered accounts. Cymphony's Access Graph and Remediation Cymphony addresses this disconnect by continuously mapping both employees and agents against enterprise systems and data assets. The platform charts complex permission inheritances across disparate systems that were not built to communicate with one another. Rather than merely presenting alert dashboards, Cymphony incorporates automated workflows that recommend or execute remediation actions and coordinate responses across enterprise security teams. Founder Background and Investment Thesis Cymphony was established by Talpiot program graduates Shy Dekel (former Unit 8200 cyber head), Idan Berkovits (former research group lead in the Prime Minister's Office and Israel Defense Prize winner), and Edi Gotlieb (former hardware engineer at Apple and the Israeli Ministry of Defense). Having led Cymphony's seed round, Sequoia co-led the Series A, citing historical enterprise infrastructure shifts where platforms that deliver visibility and control over new execution models become critical foundation layers.

红杉资本领投Cymphony A轮融资：破解企业AI智能体安全与数据治理难题 红杉资本宣布领投AI安全平台Cymphony的种子轮并联合领投其A轮融资。随着企业大规模推进AI，传统安全工具无法应对智能体自主跨系统访问数据的风险，Cymphony通过构建身份与数据映射图谱，为企业落地AI智能体提供可视化与控制能力。 预计到明年有40%的企业将因治理担忧而降级或停用自主AI智能体，限制AI落地的核心障碍在于数据访问与问责制，而非模型质量或成本。 传统安全方案将数据保护与身份管理割裂，且预设操作主体为人类；Cymphony通过图谱持续映射员工与智能体跨系统的数据访问权限，并提供自动化补救工作流。 先正达（Syngenta）、KKR、Cass Information Systems、Athennian以及红杉资本自身均已成为Cymphony的企业客户。 三位联合创始人均毕业于以色列Talpiot项目，分别拥有以色列8200部队、总理办公室研究部门、以色列国防部及苹果硬件研发等深厚安全背景。 智能体普及受阻于数据访问安全 企业AI项目常停滞于试点阶段，核心原因在于企业无法获知智能体被授予权限后具体能接触哪些数据及执行了何种操作。与人类员工相比，AI智能体部署极快、持续运行且能跨更多系统访问，致使安全团队难以准入。预计到明年将有40%的企业因治理担忧停用自主智能体。传统工具分别针对数据防泄漏与身份验证设计，均默认操作者为人，无法解决“特定智能体代特定员工访问敏感文件”的新型联合风险。 Cymphony的技术方案与商业落地 针对同一员工分散在各系统的账户以及智能体继承人类与应用权限的复杂问题，Cymphony持续构建员工、智能体与系统数据的关联图谱。产品不仅聚合告警，还嵌入工作流，提供补救建议甚至实现自动化响应与协同。目前，包括先正达（Syngenta）、KKR、Cass Information Systems和Athennian在内的企业客户均已应用其方案，红杉资本自身也是其客户。 红杉资本的投资逻辑与团队背景 红杉资本继领投种子轮后，再次联合领投Cymphony的A轮融资。三位联合创始人Shy Dekel、Idan Berkovits与Edi Gotlieb均出自以色列Talpiot项目，曾分别在8200部队网络部门、总理办公室研究团队（获以色列国防奖）以及苹果和以色列国防部任职。红杉资本指出，从云端到移动端，每次底层工作单元变革都会重塑安全架构；AI智能体具备自主行动能力，提供可见性与控制能力的安全层将成为AI技术栈不可或缺的基础设施。

Every large enterprise now has an AI mandate. Very few know exactly what happens when an agent is granted access to enterprise systems and data. What exactly will it be able to reach? How will we know what it did with it? These questions — not model quality, not cost, not talent — are the reason so many enterprise AI programs stay stuck in pilots. Cymphony was built to answer them. Agent data access is the constraint Employees increasingly work together with AI agents to execute day-to-day work. But the typical agent is nothing like an employee. It can be provisioned in minutes rather than hired over weeks. It works continuously. And it can reach across far more systems, data, and capability than an individual person. Every one of those properties is what makes an AI agent worth deploying — and every one of them is what makes a security team say no. Governance and security are already major barriers to AI adoption, with 40% of enterprises expected to demote or decommission autonomous AI agents over governance concerns by next year. That is not a prediction about AI failing to work. It’s about enterprises pulling back working agents because they cannot see or control what those agents reaching. The fundamental challenge is not utility, but accountability. For decades, security teams have built tools around two separate concerns: where sensitive data lives, and who has access. The first produced the tools that watch files, inboxes, and databases for leaks. The second produced the identity industry. But both assume the "who"s are human employees. AI broke that assumption. An identity tool can tell you an agent exists. A data tool can tell you a file is sensitive. Neither can tell you that a given agent, acting on behalf of a given employee, can reach that file right now. Identity security and data security are no longer separable. Cymphony is the solution Cymphony continuously maps both employees and agents across an enterprise, graphing who and what can reach which systems and information. It is a difficult engineering problem: the same person routinely holds a dozen different accounts scattered across systems that were never designed to talk to each other, and agents inherit access from the humans and applications that spawned them. Stitching all of that back into one accurate picture requires more than a dashboard that aggregates alerts. What we love about working with co-founders Shy Dekel, Idan Berkovits, and Edi Gotlieb is their instinct to build not for the alert but for the workflow. Instead of stopping at detection and leaving a security analyst to figure out what to do next, Cymphony pushes further — recommending and even automating remediation, and coordinating with the people who need to take action. Enterprise customers including Syngenta, KKR, Cass Information Systems, and Athennian are already seeing results. Sequoia is also a happy customer. We are proud to have led Cymphony’s seed round, and to now co-lead their Series A. Why we partnered We met Shy, Idan, and Edi through Sequoia's Israel network, introduced separately by two people in our orbit who each said some version of the same thing: these three had spent their careers on hard, unglamorous security problem many founders avoid, and they were building something different around it. All three came out of Israel's elite Talpiot program. All three have deep experience in this space: Shy led the cyber department for Unit 8200, Idan ran a research group in the Office of the Prime Minister and won an Israel Defense Prize, and Edi built hardware at Apple and at the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Every large enterprise software company has been built on a transition: the underlying unit of work changes, and the old categories are no longer the right shape. Cloud changed where software ran, and security rebuilt itself around it. Mobile changed what an endpoint was, and it rebuilt itself again. Each time, the companies that offered visibility and control over what came next eventually became infrastructure everyone else took for granted. AI is no exception, albeit the first shift where the new unit of work can act on its own. The company that lets an enterprise say yes to agents — confidently, at scale, with a record of what they did — will be not just a feature inside the AI stack, but a precondition for it. We think Cymphony is building that layer, and we are glad to be part of it.