Sentra Secures $100M in Funding: A Conversation with CEO Yoav Regev on Protecting AI Workflows in the Cloud

Sentra has announced a $50 million Series B funding round, bringing its total venture capital raised to more than $100 million.

Yoav Regev, the CEO and co-founder of Sentra, described this as just the beginning of the company’s plans.

“With this new funding, we’re doubling down on helping enterprises secure their data everywhere and adopt AI confidently so they can innovate without compromising trust,” said Yoav.

Key investors from both Series A and Series B rounds include Key1 Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Zeev Ventures, Standard Investments, and Munich Re Ventures.

As AI adoption continues, hosting providers and cloud companies face growing pressure to secure not just infrastructure but also sensitive data on which those AI workflows rely.

This hefty investment puts Sentra in a position where it can better meet the increasing security challenges that come with AI adoption in the cloud.

Hosting clients are also raising the alarm.

Often, they’re inadvertently creating new risks, and they’ll expect their hosting partners to help mitigate them, so providers who can offer built-in protections will have a major edge.

According to Gartner, genAI will “cause a spike of cybersecurity resources required to secure it, causing more than a 15% incremental spend on application and data security.”

The issue is that many providers and organizations don’t have the tech stack to provide the right kind of visibility.

“AI is only as secure as the data behind it,” said Yoav. “Every organization we work with is racing to leverage AI but is equally as concerned about exposing sensitive data.”

We sat down with Yoav to dive deeper into how Sentra’s platform is helping businesses, including hosting and cloud providers, innovate without compromising trust.

The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. Here’s Yoav.

A: “Sentra provides a comprehensive data security platform that enables enterprises to secure their data across multicloud to on-premises environments, no matter where it travels.

In particular, as data moves, Sentra helps to ensure that data retains the proper security posture and can quickly alert security personnel to variations that place data at risk.

For example, Sentra can alert if sensitive data is moved outside of certain perimeters in violation of GDPR.

It could also alert to data moving from a protected protection environment to a less-controlled development environment, where perhaps encryption and logging are disabled.”

For AI workloads, Sentra is introducing AI Security for AI Agents.

This automatically discovers and identifies AI agents, the knowledge bases they connect to, the sensitive data they access, the users they interact with, and the risks this creates.

For example, the solution can alert on copilots with access to regulated data, such as customer PII, or sensitive information not labeled with Microsoft Purview Information Protection (MPIP).

Additionally, the solution integrates with IAMs to enforce agent access permissions to sensitive data and can revoke overpermissioned access.”

A: “GenAI, data democratization, and privacy enable organizations to capitalize on data in new and innovative ways.

However, the autonomous nature of AI agents also introduces new risks of unintended sensitive data access or disclosure.

In support of good business decision-making and productivity, AI agents are often exposed to much sensitive information throughout an organization.

If this data is not adequately secured or agent permissions are not properly controlled, the data could be vulnerable to breaches or misuse.

And because AI agents have agency — the ability to independently choose what action(s) to take to achieve a particular outcome — it is critical to understand what can go wrong as the agent takes actions.

Security is foundational to enable the opportunity that AI and data collaboration bring — to enhance productivity and customer experiences, to empower exploration, and ensure trust.

To deliver the operational scale our modern AI era demands, organizations must automate their data discovery, classification, and remediation processes.

A cloud-native data security platform such as Sentra can make this possible.”

A: “Achieving petabyte scale for data management and security is now not just required, it is essential to unlock the power of AI and the cloud data that fuels it.

Knowing where your data is and securing it is job one. Ensuring it is and remains compliant, especially as independent AI agents are added to the mix, is doubly challenging.

This is a task too tall to leave to humans; Sentra helps organizations automate these functions to achieve the necessary scale and economy.

The Sentra DSP provides higher classification accuracy, fast implementation, lower cloud computing costs, and comprehensive coverage.”

A: “Sentra sees the success of AI adoption intertwined with and dependent on data.

It’s why our focus is on providing unique visibility into the union of these two elements, allowing organizations to better understand the relationship and associated risks.

When they do, it’s possible to institute appropriate controls and protections: to allow the organization to innovate rapidly and securely.”

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Today’s hosting clients expect more than just uptime.

Customer service is taking center stage, with a strong focus on ease of use, user experience, and overall satisfaction, like built-in security, compliance, and AI-readiness.

But the risks associated with data mishandling in AI are not small potatoes.

It’s like trying a new medication: Switching to something the body has never encountered before means careful monitoring and management.

This means hosting providers are now expected to balance speed with security.

Tools like Sentra’s DSPM platform help hosting providers turn security into a business advantage. AI brings massive opportunities, but only the companies that can keep their data secure will win in the end.

It’s as Yoav put it: “AI is only as secure as the data behind it.”