Ent Raises $100M Seed Round to Build Intent-Aware Security for the AI Era

Ent, a San Francisco-based cybersecurity startup, emerged from stealth with a $100M seed round led by Decibel, with participation from Sequoia, Crosspoint Capital Partners, Craft Ventures, Shield Capital, Felicis, and In-Q-Tel.

The company was founded by Elias "Lou" Manousos, Co-Founder and CEO, and Brandon Dixon, Co-Founder, who previously built RiskIQ before its acquisition by Microsoft. Ent is focused on intent-aware workspace security, a model designed to evaluate human, AI, and application activity in real time and intervene before risky actions become incidents.

The funding matters because enterprise security is facing a structural shift. AI is no longer simply a tool employees use. AI agents are increasingly becoming participants in workflows, decisions, and operations. That changes how organizations think about governance, risk, and security. The emergence of Ent signals a broader industry move away from security systems that primarily detect and respond after the fact and toward platforms designed to prevent risky actions before they occur.

What Happened

Cybersecurity startups are not supposed to emerge quietly from stealth carrying a $100M seed round. That kind of financing typically arrives after years of customer accumulation, product refinement, and investor courtship. Ent skipped several chapters.

The San Francisco company announced a $100M seed financing led by Decibel, with support from Sequoia, Crosspoint Capital Partners, Craft Ventures, Shield Capital, Felicis, and In-Q-Tel. The investor group combines expertise across enterprise software, cybersecurity, venture capital, and national security, making this one of the more notable cybersecurity financings of 2026. The scale of the financing immediately places Ent among the most closely watched companies in the broader enterprise cybersecurity funding landscape.

The founders are not newcomers. Elias "Lou" Manousos and Brandon Dixon previously built RiskIQ, a company known for helping organizations understand internet-scale threats and external attack surfaces before its acquisition by Microsoft. Following the acquisition, both founders gained additional experience inside one of the world's largest security organizations. Investors are not simply backing a product. They are backing founders with a track record of identifying security shifts before they become obvious.

Why This Matters

Every generation of cybersecurity has a defining problem. The early internet era focused on perimeter defense. Cloud computing shifted attention toward identity and access management. The AI era introduces a different challenge: understanding intent.

Traditional security systems excel at recording events. They collect logs, generate alerts, and preserve evidence. The problem is that modern enterprise activity increasingly blurs the line between normal behavior and risky behavior. A human employee can accidentally expose sensitive information. An AI agent can execute a legitimate task with unintended consequences. An application can perform exactly as designed while still creating risk.

The result is a growing gap between activity and understanding. Ent's core thesis centers on that gap. Rather than asking only what happened, the company is focused on understanding why an action is occurring and whether it aligns with organizational policy before the action is completed. Intent-aware security is an emerging cybersecurity category focused on understanding the context and purpose behind actions rather than relying solely on event detection. That distinction may sound subtle. In practice, it represents a meaningful shift in how enterprise security systems are designed.

Market Context

The timing of Ent's launch reflects larger changes taking place across enterprise technology and the broader AI security market. Organizations are deploying AI systems into customer service, software development, operations, research, compliance, and internal workflows at a pace rarely seen in technology adoption cycles. Productivity gains are attracting executive attention, while security implications are arriving alongside them.

AI compresses timelines. Tasks that once took hours can now happen in minutes. Decisions that once required multiple approvals can be automated. Information can move across systems, departments, and applications with unprecedented speed. The same acceleration that improves efficiency also creates new forms of risk.

Security teams increasingly face environments where humans, applications, and AI agents operate simultaneously. Determining which actions are authorized, which actions are risky, and which actions require intervention becomes significantly more difficult. This backdrop helps explain why investors are willing to commit substantial capital to startups attempting to redefine enterprise security architecture.

Competitive Landscape

The cybersecurity market is crowded. New vendors launch every year promising better detection, faster response times, and improved visibility. The challenge is that visibility alone has become a commodity.

Organizations already collect enormous volumes of security telemetry. Security operations centers often struggle less with obtaining data and more with determining which signals matter. Ent is positioning itself differently.

The company's intent-aware approach focuses on evaluating activity in context and intervening when necessary. The platform is designed to complement existing security investments rather than replace them outright, extending capabilities across environments where human users and AI-driven processes coexist. That positioning is important because enterprises rarely rip out established security infrastructure. Winning often means fitting into existing architectures while solving a problem competitors are not adequately addressing.

What This Signals

The size of Ent's seed round says as much about investor sentiment as it does about the company itself. Venture capital has become increasingly selective over the last several years. Investors have shown less interest in incremental improvements and greater interest in platforms targeting foundational shifts.

AI is creating one of those shifts. The question facing enterprises is no longer whether AI will become integrated into business operations. The question is how organizations maintain control, governance, and security as that integration accelerates. Ent sits directly at that intersection.

The investor syndicate itself offers another signal. Decibel, Sequoia, Crosspoint Capital Partners, Craft Ventures, Shield Capital, Felicis, and In-Q-Tel represent a mix of enterprise software, cybersecurity, defense, and intelligence expertise. That combination suggests investors see intent-aware security not only as a commercial opportunity but also as an emerging infrastructure challenge for modern organizations. The company's financing suggests investors believe intent-aware security could become an important category within enterprise cybersecurity over the coming years.

The Bigger Industry Shift

Technology cycles tend to follow a predictable pattern. A new capability emerges. Adoption accelerates. Productivity increases. Risk follows close behind.

Cloud computing created cloud security. Mobile computing created mobile security. AI is creating an entirely new set of security challenges that organizations are only beginning to understand. Ent's launch reflects a broader realization across the market: protecting systems is no longer enough. Organizations increasingly need to understand the intent behind actions occurring within those systems.

The funding also reinforces San Francisco's continued role as a center of gravity for cybersecurity and enterprise AI startups, particularly as investors search for companies building foundational infrastructure around AI adoption. That idea may end up becoming one of the defining themes of cybersecurity's next chapter.

For founders, operators, investors, and security leaders, the emergence of Ent is not just another funding announcement. It is a signal about where enterprise security conversations are heading next.