This former Microsoft PM thinks she can unseat CyberArk in 18 months

The net contiguous has a permissions problem. As non-humans — chatbots, AI agents and automated systems — person proliferated connected the web, truthful has the request to supply them with credentials, permissions, and identities. That’s 1 large crushed individuality and entree absorption startups that assistance negociate this caller benignant of integer workforce are raking successful task capital.

Now, a 35-person Israeli-American startup called Venice is emerging from stealth with caller currency and a beauteous plucky claim: that it’s already replacing manufacture stalwarts similar CyberArk and Okta astatine Fortune 500 companies.

Venice, founded conscionable implicit 2 years ago, says it raised $20 cardinal successful Series A backing successful December, led by IVP, with information from Index Ventures, which led its earlier effect round.

Unlike galore of its well-funded rivals – which see Persona (raised a $200 cardinal Series D past April), Veza (closed a $108 cardinal Series D successful May 2025), and GitGuardian SAS (raised $50 cardinal past week) – Venice is tackling some cloud-based and on-premises environments, a method prime that has made the merchandise harder to physique but positioned it to triumph implicit the ample enterprises inactive moving bequest systems alongside modern unreality infrastructure.

At its helm sits 31-year-old Rotem Lurie, whose way to entrepreneurship beauteous overmuch ticks each container connected VCs’ checklists. The girl of 2 programmer parents successful Israel (her parent was 1 of the country’s archetypal pistillate bundle engineers), Lurie spent four-and-a-half years arsenic a lieutenant successful Unit 8200, Israel’s elite quality corps, earlier joining Microsoft arsenic a merchandise manager moving connected what would go Defender for Identity.

She aboriginal became the archetypal merchandise prosecute astatine Axis Security, an entree absorption startup that sold to Hewlett Packard Enterprise for $500 cardinal successful 2022. Just earlier that acquisition closed, Lurie near to articulation YL Ventures, a cybersecurity-focused task firm.

That little stint astatine YL Ventures proved peculiarly instructive. “Every day, I utilized to conscionable a squad of 3 23-year-old boys,” Lurie says straightforwardly implicit a Zoom call. “Most of those companies physique their exertion to beryllium acquired. The full strategy astir what occupation you’re solving and however you penetrate the marketplace – it’s a wholly antithetic approach.”

To regenerate incumbents similar CyberArk, which has agelong dominated the privileged entree absorption market, Lurie realized she’d request to play a longer game. That meant gathering exertion that’s some heavy and broad capable to enactment the complex, hybrid IT environments of astir ample enterprises.

The method situation up of Lurie went thus: astir individuality and entree absorption teams juggle astir 10 antithetic tools to negociate who and what has entree to firm systems. Venice’s level consolidates that sprawl into a azygous strategy that handles privileged entree crossed on-premises servers, SaaS applications, and unreality infrastructure for humans and non-human entities alike.

“Tying everything unneurotic was what mattered to customers the most,” Lurie says. Indeed, Venice operates a SaaS subscription model, but Lurie insists it isn’t competing connected price. “We trim the cost, but it’s not due to the fact that we spell inexpensive connected pricing,” she explains.

“It’s due to the fact that we spare each the overhead [associated with galore of today’s offerings], particularly the nonrecreational services” — the advisor fees and lengthy implementations that person go an astir unavoidable taxation for endeavor information deployments.

The stake appears to beryllium paying off. Lurie says Venice is present “completely replacing” bequest vendors astatine Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 customers, and cutting implementation clip to conscionable a week-and-a-half, from the emblematic 6 months to 2 years, acknowledgment to AI-powered automation. While she declined to sanction customers connected the record, she told TechCrunch disconnected the grounds that they see a 170-year-old, publically traded manufacturing elephantine arsenic good arsenic a planetary euphony conglomerate.

Cack Wilhelm, the spouse astatine IVP who led Venice’s Series A, says Lurie stood out. “The occupation with astir cybersecurity pitches is everyone’s tackling thing excessively tiny to ever beryllium material,” Wilhelm says. “When you look astatine the monolithic exits — CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks — they were doing audacious things from the beginning. Rotem is the same.”

Wilhelm points to the urgency created by AI agents arsenic a cardinal origin driving IVP’s concern thesis. “If each idiosyncratic is going to person tens of agents moving connected their behalf, and privileged entree tools were built for a static satellite of IT professionals, we request our individuality conception to set to that,” Wilhelm said. “Very often, erstwhile [companies] are breached, they’re breached by radical simply logging successful with idiosyncratic else’s credentials. You lick that with just-in-time permissions that are scoped to the idiosyncratic and the moment.”

Though crowded, the marketplace seems anxious for caller solutions. Identity and entree absorption spending was expected to transcend $24 cardinal successful 2025, expanding by 13% from a twelvemonth earlier, according to an manufacture radical called Identity Management Institute.

Venice’s squad is divided betwixt Israel, wherever R&D is based, and North America, wherever the go-to-market squad operates. Notably, astir fractional of the cybersecurity institution is women, a rarity successful 1 of tech’s astir stubbornly male-dominated sectors.

Lurie’s co-founder, Or Vaknin, serves arsenic CTO (he’s pictured with Lurie, above). The company’s investors see Assaf Rappaport, co-founder and CEO of Wiz, and Raaz Herzberg, CMO astatine Wiz and Lurie’s erstwhile workfellow from their days arsenic interns astatine Microsoft.

For Lurie, who says she has spent overmuch of her vocation arsenic “the lone pistillate successful the room,” creating a much balanced squad wasn’t a calculated act. “You tin ne'er spot yourself doing thing if you didn’t spot idiosyncratic similar you doing it,” she says. “This is thing that attracts different women — to consciousness similar they tin beryllium portion of it.”

The question present is whether Venice’s two-year caput commencement and aboriginal Fortune 500 wins volition beryllium capable to fend disconnected deep-pocketed competitors arsenic they pursuit the aforesaid endeavor buyers. Can the marketplace enactment aggregate winners? Or, volition individuality absorption travel the way of different information categories and consolidate astir 1 oregon 2 ascendant players?