Twine Raises $12 Million to Address Cybersecurity Talent Shortage with AI-Powered Solutions

Twine, a cybersecurity startup founded by former executives from the creditable cybersecurity company Claroty, raised $12 million in a Seed funding round. The funding was co-led by Ten Eleven Ventures and Dell Technologies Capital, with additional participation from Assaf Rappaport and Roy Reznik, who founded Wiz. A portion of the funding will be used to further develop Twine’s approach in cybersecurity, which addresses growing demand for skilled professionals in that space.

Founded in 2024, the leadership team of Twine is comprised of Benny Porat (CEO), Nadav Erez (Technology), Omri Green (Go-To-Market), and Justin Woody (Marketing). All of them were core members at Claroty when Porat served as the co-founder and CTO. Moreover, Porat, Erez, and Green are all alumni of Israel’s elite Intelligence Corps. While Twine operates out of offices in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Seattle, Washington, across both locations, there are more than 20 employees on board.

It has largely experienced exponential growth in recent years due to fast-growing cloud technologies, remote work, and dependence on more and more artificial intelligence (AI) tools. At a time of rising cyber threats towards organizations, the demand for cybersecurity talent is high, but along with that comes a rather significant global shortage in the cybersecurity talent pool. According to the World Economic Forum, there is an almost 4 million shortage of cybersecurity professionals globally. The shortage has put most companies at risk from attacks, and CISOs have had to lose their proactive approach and focus more on reactive measures in order to maintain their gains.

Aware of this gap, Twine, therefore, designed a unique solution to bridge the talent gap. Alex is the first product in this lineup of AI digital employees that can work toward empowering the cybersecurity teams by providing them with the required digital employees. It is designed to help manage cybersecurity more effectively and efficiently in collaboration with human teams. In the first product, Alex, the platform specifically focuses on dealing with identity management (IAM) tasks, which are crucially concerning the cybersecurity departments. Identity management is a critical function in protecting organizations from unauthorized access and ensuring that only authorized individuals can access sensitive systems and data.

Twine’s founders identified IAM as a pressing issue for IT and cybersecurity teams, who face the ongoing challenge of defending against malicious actors attempting to breach their systems. Alex is designed to take over repetitive and time-consuming identity management tasks so that organizations can have optimal security posture while most burden is reduced on human personnel. According to the CEO of Twine, Benny Porat, the vision is to have several series of AI-driven cybersecurity employees that understand the needs of a specific organization. Through this, the digital employees will manage a number of cybersecurity tasks ranging from identity management, ultimately leading to end-to-end execution across the security landscape.

Porat mentioned that the company’s mission is, “Our vision is to create AI digital cybersecurity employees that can grasp each organization’s unique needs and allow end-to-end cyber execution, starting with identity management.” He further mentioned that this requires finding the right proportion of human and machine coordination so that the cybersecurity team can work more efficiently but not replace human expertise.

Twine’s approach comes at a time when cybersecurity professionals are spreading thinner and thinner, as the complexity and frequency of cyberattacks increase. According to over 78% of cybersecurity leaders, there is a significant lack of in-house skills for cybersecurity teams to meet their goals, forcing many teams to spend most of their time merely fighting fires-to respond to an immediate threat-rather than strategizing and planning for long-term risk management. Twine’s platform offers a potential solution to this problem by enhancing the capabilities of cybersecurity teams and helping them address critical issues more proactively.

The startup’s use of AI to assist cybersecurity teams is also an acknowledgment of the broader trends in the industry. As organizations embrace automation and AI technologies across various sectors, the potential for AI to revolutionize cybersecurity is becoming more apparent. Integrate AI into identity management to help take some of the pressure off the shoulders of human teams, which may be freed up to do more strategic work, for example, in developing security protocols, and answering even the most advanced threats.

Additionally, Twine’s AI-driven platform will be scaleable, and every organization can then have one customized according to their needs. As the digital landscape evolves, small, medium, and large-sized businesses would increasingly require innovative cybersecurity solutions for efficiency and flexibility. Twine’s platform promises to fill this need by offering tools that an organization may need to defend it against widespread cyber threats.

The core of Twine’s approach to cybersecurity is to not only look to solve the problem of talent but to improve the overall security infrastructure of the organization. Focusing on a core area like identity management gets at a fundamental aspect of cybersecurity that is greatly neglected or, at best, mishandled. With the rise of remote work and cloud technologies, ensuring that only the right people can get into the most important systems and data is even more critical.

Looking into the future, Twine will be expanding its product offerings from just identity management to providing end-to-end security solution that can be deployed easily in any organization’s cyber security strategy. The company focuses on continued innovation to ensure that its AI-powered platform stays at the forefront of cybersecurity.

This seed funding round by Twine reflects the increasing interest in AI-based cybersecurity solutions and the demand for more effective mitigation strategies against global talent shortages. Ten Eleven Ventures and Dell Technologies Capital’s announcement gives even more credibility to Twine’s approach.

Thus, the solution for effective, scalable solutions in an increasingly mature cybersecurity industry, only grows stronger. Twine’s innovatively developed platform is a clear example that can be seen as one of the future indicators for addressing certain problems and keeping ahead of growing cyber threats.

With its team of experienced founders, a strong investment backing, and an envisioned future for further progress in information security, Twine is destined to gain a significant firm footing in the cybersecurity landscape in the years to come.