The Pulse
Capital One Ventures Leads $150 Million Strategic Investment in AI-Agent Data Security Firm Sentra
Sentra announced a $150 million strategic investment led by Capital One Ventures as the company focuses on securing data accessed by AI agents. The company says it will use the funding to expand product work and its go-to-market efforts.
AI.info Team · Written with AI · fact-checked ·
Sentra says companies are pushing ahead with AI faster than security teams can govern the data those systems reach. The company announced that Capital One Ventures has led a $150 million strategic investment in Sentra, whose platform finds sensitive information and manages access to it.
The investment comes after a year in which Sentra reports more than 300% year-over-year growth. Capital One Ventures joins existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Zeev Ventures, Standard Investments, Munich Re Ventures and Key1 Capital; a Capital One representative will join Sentra’s board.
Capital One Ventures backs Sentra’s data controls
Sentra’s pitch is that data protection should start with the information an AI agent might reach, rather than with inspection of each request as it happens. The company says its platform works across cloud services, SaaS, data warehouses, on-premises file shares and the knowledge stores used by AI systems, while leaving data inside the customer’s environment.
The funding arrives as organizations deploy copilots, assistants and cloud AI services, which Sentra says are spreading faster than governance can keep up. Sensitive information is also distributed across cloud, SaaS and on-premises systems, the company says, making it harder for older visibility tools to show where records live and who or what can access them.
Sentra co-founder and CEO Yoav Regev framed the issue around agents’ access to data: “Traditional perimeter controls weren't built for agents moving at machine speed. What organizations can do is make sure the data those agents reach is already secured. Sentra protects data where it lives and controls which identities, human and AI, can reach it, so organizations can deploy AI more quickly while staying in control. This investment lets us bring agentic data security to every enterprise putting agents to work.”
Classification and access mapping come first
Before an agent reaches data, Sentra says it identifies and classifies sensitive information across environments, then maps access for people, service accounts and AI agents, including access inherited through other permissions. The company says it enforces least privilege for non-human identities and removes redundant, obsolete and high-risk data that agents should not find.
Sentra describes the approach as protecting data at rest: information stays where it lives, and controls are applied to the data and identities that depend on it. The company says its platform analyzes data entirely inside the customer’s environment, so sensitive information does not leave that environment.
Sentra’s response plan covers agent access
When access looks unusual, Sentra says its data-aware detection can flag activity involving sensitive information. Automated remediation can revoke access and remove risky sharing, while routing high-risk issues to data owners and existing workflows.
After: Sentra says it can show what an agent could have reached, with business context for the datasets involved. The company says this gives security, legal and compliance teams evidence to respond quickly and defensibly.
Chaim Sanders, CISO at Lyft, described the access question as a condition for his organization’s AI rollout: “Our teams at Lyft want to move fast with AI, but we need to know what data our agents can reach before we turn them on. Sentra gives us that answer across our whole environment, so security helps the rollout instead of slowing it down”.
Funding will support product work and expansion
Sentra says it plans to use the investment to broaden visibility into agents, copilots and models, and the sensitive data they touch. Its stated product priorities also include continuous least privilege for human and non-human identities, protection for data before agents reach it, and faster containment when an agent behaves unexpectedly.
The company also plans to expand field and channel programs, grow its brand and marketing, and enter new geographies. Sentra was founded in 2021 by Yoav Regev, Asaf Kochan, Ron Reiter and Yair Cohen, and is headquartered in New York and Tel Aviv.