The Next Identity Crisis Is Non-Human: Our Investment in Astrix
Imagine the modern enterprise network in 2024. For every human user, there are 50+ digital workers silently powering your operations—API keys authenticating transactions, service accounts managing your cloud infrastructure, and AI agents making autonomous decisions. These so-called non-human identities (NHIs) are the invisible facilitators of modern business, executing millions of machine-to-machine interactions that keep your company running.
But there is a critical blindspot. While we have spent decades focused on security for human users, these non-human identities have gone unmanaged and have exploded in number, outnumbering humans by orders of magnitude. Until now, no Okta-like equivalent has existed to manage these NHIs, and customers are feeling the pain. The 2023 Microsoft breach, which compromised the credentials of 22 organizations, including U.S. government officials, wasn’t just another headline; it was a wake-up call. The future of enterprise security isn’t just about protecting human identities—it’s about securing the machines.Looking ahead, AI agents are about to make this exponentially more complex. When we released our recent 2024 State of Generative AI in the Enterprise Report, we predicted that 2025 will be a year of agentic transformation. By 2028, Gartner predicts that AI agents will autonomously make 15% of all enterprise decisions. Each of these agents requires its own set of digital credentials, expanding the attack surface at an unprecedented rate.
Why We’re Backing Astrix
Astrix is tackling the challenge of securing non-human identities head-on by addressing the full lifecycle of NHIs, ensuring that enterprises can automate confidently and securely. The platform automatically detects and inventories machine identities, evaluates stale access across SaaS apps, cloud environments, and on-premises infrastructure, and enforces policies for provisioning and de-provisioning. This means enterprises can stay secure without adding complexity to their workflows. With Astrix, companies don’t just scale—they scale securely.
Menlo Ventures is proud to lead Astrix Security’s $45 million Series B, including an investment from the Anthology Fund, a joint initiative with Anthropic designed to fuel the next generation of AI startups. With this funding round, Astrix will ensure the future of AI and automation isn’t undermined by avoidable security failures.
The Team to Bet On
Astrix didn’t just enter the market—they created the category. Founders Alon Jackson (CEO) and Idan Gour (CTO) foresaw the explosive growth of this new era of cybersecurity and built a world-class team and product. We’re excited to join our friends at Bessemer, CRV, F2, and Workday Ventures in backing Astrix on this journey.
Securing the Future of AI
The team at Menlo is investing at the forefront of AI and security, backing companies that tackle tomorrow’s most pressing challenges. Astrix perfectly embodies this ethos, addressing a critical gap in enterprise security. We’re proud to partner with Jackson, Gour, and the Astrix team and welcome them to a portfolio of AI-first leaders, including Abnormal Security, Anthropic, Arch, Cleanlab, Eleos, Genesis Therapeutics, Harness, Higgsfield, Neon, OpenSpace, Pinecone, Recursion, Sana, Squint, Typeface, Unstructured, Vilya, and Xaira.
By investing in AI pioneers like Astrix, we are getting closer to realizing the potential of the intelligent enterprise. If you’re a founder building foundational solutions for the AI-driven future, we’d love to hear from you.
