Exclusive: Redactive AI raises $7.5M seed round
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An Australia-based security startup has raised a $7.5 million seed funding round to help major corporations use generative AI without fear of bots spilling their secrets, the company exclusively shared with Axios.
The big picture: Companies haven't yet figured out how to bring AI agents or chatbots into their workflows while protecting proprietary information.
- Redactive AI offers tools that set guardrails for what information AI tools can access and retrieve.
Driving the news: Redactive said Tuesday it raised a $7.5 million seed round led by Felicis Ventures and Blackbird Ventures.
- Atlassian Ventures and automation company Zapier also participated in the round.
Zoom in: Redactive was founded by a pair of former Atlassian employees — Andrew Pankevicius and Alexander Valente — and AI engineer Lucas Sargent after working with companies on their cloud transitions and conducting cybersecurity reviews during that process.
- The tool is designed to help engineers and data governance teams set guardrails for the AI tools they're trying to let their companies use — including those that set permissions for what information different employees can access.
- This could be especially helpful for organizations looking to use AI agents, which can act on a specific employee's behalf to pull data or do a specific task, Pankevicius told Axios.
What they're saying: "We're really trying to virtualize that AI engineer that's in so much demand right now to augment normal software teams," Pankevicius said.
- That mission means that Redactive has to have top-tier subject-matter expertise itself, Pankevicius noted, and that triggered the need for venture capital dollars.
The intrigue: Redactive is already working with two prominent Australian financial services organizations. Other customers include frontier technology companies, according to a press release shared with Axios.
What's next: The startup says it will use the new funding to hire about five employees across the engineering, customer success and marketing teams. The company currently has 10 employees, Pankevicius said.
- Redactive will also use some of the funds to bring on more employees in the U.S.
