AI Security Startup Alice Secures $140 Million Amidst Rising Enterprise AI Threats
AI trust, safety, and security company Alice has raised $140 million in a funding round led by Apax Digital Funds, signaling strong investor confidence in specialized AI security solutions.
Alice, formerly known as ActiveFence, has successfully closed a $140 million funding round, bringing its total funding to $280 million and valuing the company at approximately $800 million to $1 billion. The round was led by Apax Digital Funds and saw participation from new investors including SentinelOne and Samsung Electronics, alongside existing backers. This significant investment underscores the burgeoning market demand for dedicated AI security platforms as enterprises increasingly adopt AI technologies.
The surge in funding comes at a critical juncture, with adversaries increasingly targeting large language models (LLMs) and agentic AI deployments rather than traditional network perimeters. Alice's core strategy revolves around its proprietary dataset, internally dubbed "Rabbit Hole," which compiles real-world attack patterns against digital platforms. This dataset is crucial for predicting and preventing adversarial behaviors against AI models, a capability that is becoming indispensable for organizations deploying AI.
Alice's platform leverages the "Rabbit Hole" dataset to test, defend, and monitor AI models throughout their lifecycle. This includes pre-launch red-teaming, implementing runtime guardrails, and continuous production testing. The company's approach addresses the challenge that there are virtually infinite ways to compromise an AI system, making it impossible for defenders to anticipate every attack vector without comprehensive threat intelligence.
The newly acquired capital will be instrumental in expanding Alice's research into AI manipulation techniques, enhancing its model-testing technologies, and scaling its go-to-market efforts. The company aims to bolster defenses against sophisticated threats such as prompt injection and jailbreaks, which are becoming more prevalent as AI systems become more integrated into business operations.
Alice's business metrics reflect the growing enterprise appetite for AI security. The company is approaching $100 million in annual recurring revenue, with its AI-focused business experiencing over 500% growth in the past two years. Alice reports working with eight of the top ten AI model labs and protecting over three billion online users, with notable customers including Anthropic, Google, and Nvidia.
The company's rebranding from ActiveFence to Alice in January 2026 marked a strategic pivot from online content moderation to a direct focus on securing AI models. This shift highlights the necessity of formal AI security frameworks to address emerging exploitation techniques. Alice's success positions it among a growing cohort of cybersecurity vendors racing to establish dedicated defenses for AI infrastructure.
As frontier labs and Fortune 500 companies alike recognize AI-specific security as a baseline requirement, Alice's substantial funding round signals strong investor confidence in this rapidly expanding niche within the cybersecurity landscape. The company's focus on proactive defense and real-world threat intelligence appears well-aligned with the evolving threat landscape and the increasing reliance on AI across industries.