Straiker AI Announces $64M Series A Raise To Secure AI Applications and Agents
June 29, 2026: Straiker AI, one of Rain Capital’s portfolio companies, announced a massive $64M Series A raise today.
As one of Straiker’s seed investors, Rain has been involved with the company since its earliest days. We are proud to be one of Straiker’s seed investors and continues to support the company in the Series A raise. It is exciting to see the market recognize what has become increasingly obvious: AI security is no longer a niche category – it’s a foundational enterprise infrastructure.
As agents move from experiments to production, the attack surface shifts from code to reasoning, identity, memory, and autonomous actions. Straiker’s technology allows them to secure the entire AI stack, from code to agents to applications and models.
We are especially impressed with Straiker’s STAR research lab, led by Girish Chandrasekar. STAR has been leading the field on offensive AI research. STAR’s findings have contributed to Open-source AI security and helped to build the guardrails and protection that underlines tomorrow’s autonomous systems and applications.
Congratulations to Ankur Shah, Sreenath Kurupati, and the entire Straiker team for the massive raise. Can’t wait to see what you do next, Straiker!
Accenture to Acquire runZero in a $4.2 bn Deal to Assemble a Modern xOT Security Platform
June 18, 2026: Accenture announced plans to acquire runZero, a Rain Capital portfolio company, alongside NetRise and a majority stake in Dragos, in a combined transaction valued at approximately $4.2 billion. Rain Capital first invested in runZero at the Series A and witnessed the company’s growth into a leading exposure management solution across IT, OT, and cloud assets.
The transaction reflects a larger shift in how enterprises and governments are thinking about critical infrastructure defense. Operational environments spanning industrial control systems, IoT devices, sensors, cloud-connected devices, and related IT infrastructure are now referred to as xOT. As xOT environments become more connected, the boundary between digital compromise and physical disruption becomes harder to separate.
runZero’s platform helps organizations uncover unknown and unmanaged assets that traditional tools often miss, giving defenders a more complete view of what exists across their attack surface.
For critical infrastructure operators, visibility is the foundation to defense. The ability to understand every asset, assess exposure continuously, and connect that visibility to detection and response is increasingly central to defending xOT systems.
We are proud to have been part of the journey with runZero and wish the team best of luck in their new journey with Accenture.
Clario Launches From Stealth to Address Enterprise Data ROT
Clario, a Rain Capital portfolio company, launched from stealth with $6 million in seed funding to tackle one of the most persistent blockers in enterprise AI adoption: data ROT: redundant, obsolete, and trivial files that quietly accumulate across enterprise systems.
40% of enterprise data is estimated to be ROT – duplicate and obsolete data can turn enterprise knowledge bases into noisy, unreliable inputs for AI systems. It also leads to unnecessary operational costs.
Founders Yousuf Khan and Madhu Vohra bring decades of enterprise operating experience to the problem. Yousuf is a five-time CIO and former CISO who has spent over 20 years leading enterprise technology organizations, while Madhu is a veteran engineering leader with leadership roles at Oracle, NetApp, Nutanix, and VMware, where she built large-scale enterprise storage and infrastructure systems. Together, they are solving a problem they experienced firsthand: enterprise data sprawl has become one of the biggest barriers to successful AI adoption.
Clario uses AI to identify and manage data ROT with human guidance. Its outcome-based model keeps costs low while improving enterprise data hygiene. Their mission is to build the trusted data foundation for AI adoption at scale.
Congratulations, Yousuf and Madhu!
Forte Group Co-Hosts Black Hat(HER) Executive Dinner in San Francisco
Forte Group co-hosted the inaugural Black Hat(HER) Executive Dinner in San Francisco, bringing together women leaders across cybersecurity for an evening of conversation and community.
The discussion centered on issues shaping the future of security, including AI’s impact on cyber defense, human safety and privacy, and the importance of building stronger networks for women across the industry.
Thank you to Black Hat and Brittany Buza for bringing this community together. We are excited to support the continued growth of Black Hat(HER) and the leaders helping move cybersecurity forward.
The Forte Group will be joining forces with Black Hat(HER) for another event at the US Blackhat in August.
Gartner Summit Takeaway: Who is Watching Your AI?
The headline out of the recent Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit was clear: AI is evolving far too fast for human oversight, forcing a major shift toward Agentic Security and the rapid rise of “Guardian Agents.” The consensus from the summit? It takes an AI to govern an AI.
The Supervision Mandate
Traditional security perimeters cannot police autonomous code. The new mandate requires deploying Guardian Agents which are specialized AI tools or LLMs designed strictly to monitor, supervise, and enforce strict safety boundaries on your operational AI teammates.
The Core Reality: AI agents cannot be trusted implicitly to stay within their guardrails. If you have an AI workforce, you need an automated, independent AI supervisor ensuring agents do not violate policies or exhibit rogue behavior.
Latest Podcast: Security in the Age of AI Acceleration
In this episode of the Cyber Smokehouse podcast, Atlassian CISO and Rain Capital Venture Partner David Cross explores the shifting security landscape where generative AI significantly reduces friction for attackers while increasing the frequency of threats. He shares a critical buyer’s perspective for the CISO community, noting that traditional defense models are becoming outdated.
This shift creates a unique opportunity for new ventures to focus on AI-driven automation for essential security operations. Viewers can better understand how enterprise leaders calculate the value of new technologies, providing a clear roadmap for identifying robust infrastructure over simple AI integrations in today’s market.
