Sequoia Bets $60 Million on Defensive AI as Cyberattacks Go Autonomous
Corma, a cybersecurity startup founded in 2025 and headquartered in Tel Aviv and San Francisco, emerged from stealth on August 10, 2026, announcing a $60 million seed round led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Khosla Ventures and Coatue. The announcement did not include a total valuation.
The capital goes directly to the problem: AI-powered attacks are now outpacing human-driven defenses. As Sequoia Partner Shaun Maguire put it, 'Agentic AI gives attackers a structural speed advantage.' Corma's answer is to train AI models specifically for defense — not offense.
The product gap Corma is filling
CEO Alon Pluda argues that most leading AI models — from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google — are built around capabilities that map naturally to offensive security: writing and refining code, identifying bugs, and multi-step reasoning. Defensive cybersecurity, Pluda told Fortune, 'doesn't have anything to do with coding.' It is about 'looking at logs, audits, [and] finding the needle in a haystack' while maintaining a consistent approach across thousands of simultaneous actions.
Corma deployed its first model six weeks before the announcement to organizations across healthcare, financial services, energy, critical infrastructure, and retail — sectors where a breach is not just a financial event. The company says its model has reduced threat response times by 94% in those early adopters.
Why the timing matters
The urgency is not theoretical. The source notes that in recent months OpenAI's models have been observed attacking Hugging Face — an illustration of how AI-driven threats now operate at superhuman speed, beyond the reach of conventional, human-paced incident response.
Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, framed the stakes plainly: 'As cyberattacks become more autonomous and scalable, the stakes move beyond data and finances to critical infrastructure, healthcare systems, and essential services where failures can have real-world consequences.'
Maguire added that Corma is 'building the intelligence layer defense actually needs.'
Corma will deploy the $60 million to expand the data and training behind its models and to hire across defensive security, AI, and research.
The company's name, Pluda explained, comes from The Lord of the Rings — 'corma' is Elvish for ring. The books center on destroying an all-powerful ring; Pluda says his product is like that ring, 'but this time for the defenders.'
CEO Times take
This is free enterprise doing what government mandates cannot: moving at the speed of the threat. Private capital — $60 million of it, allocated by investors accountable to returns, not to appropriations committees — is funding the defensive layer that critical infrastructure desperately needs. The 94% reduction in response time is not a press-release number to dismiss; it is the kind of performance signal that tells the market where to send the next dollar.
When AI-powered attackers can hit healthcare systems and energy grids faster than any human team can respond, the answer is not a new federal cybersecurity bureau. The answer is Sequoia writing a check and a founder with a clear thesis getting out of stealth. Capital rewards clear rules — and right now, the rule is simple: fight AI with AI.
