Israeli startup raises $140M to enhance AI model security

An Israeli cybersecurity startup has secured $140 million in fresh funding aimed at protecting AI models from misuse, arriving at a moment when high-profile AI hacks have made the vulnerability of autonomous systems impossible to ignore. A surge of capital into AI defense Torq, one of the more prominent players in this space, raised approximately $140 million in a Series D round in January 2026, part of a broader $332 million funding haul that pushed its valuation to $1.2 billion. Torq’s focus is on Security Operations Centers, or SOCs, that use autonomous agents. Think of it as building AI to watch AI, automating the kind of threat detection and response work that human security analysts currently handle, but at machine speed and scale. Torq isn’t alone. Oligo, another Israeli startup specializing in runtime security for AI agents and cloud-native applications, reached $140 million in total funding after closing a $60 million round in August 2026. Onyx Security pulled in $113 million in July 2026, bringing its total to roughly $153 million, for work on what it calls an “AI control plane” designed to manage and govern autonomous agents. And Irregular, which collaborates with OpenAI...