Last Updated: 26 November 2025
Opti, an AI-native identity security platform, has closed a $20 million seed round. YL Ventures, Mayfield Fund, and Hetz Ventures co-led the investment. Squared Circle Ventures, LocalGlobe, and Maple Capital also participated, alongside angel investor and cybersecurity veteran Shlomo Kramer.
The company plans to use the fresh capital to speed up product expansion and fuel international growth.
This substantial seed round positions Opti to tackle one of cybersecurity's most persistent challenges: managing who has access to what, and why.
Identity and access management sits at the core of modern cybersecurity. Yet the reality is sobering. Only half of organizations believe their IAM tools actually work well. Manual processes and limited automation are the main culprits.
The problem keeps getting worse. Businesses face an ever-growing web of identity-related vulnerabilities. Research from McKinsey shows that automation in cybersecurity improves efficiency while also strengthening overall risk management. Some studies on critical infrastructure suggest AI can boost threat detection rates by as much as 98%. Opti brings these capabilities directly to identity security through a fully automated platform designed to cut costs, save time, and reduce exposure.
"Identity has evolved into a massive data ecosystem that enterprises struggle to control. Teams work incredibly hard, but they spend their time managing complexity instead of focusing on strategic opportunities. Opti gives them an intelligence layer that elevates and automates their capabilities, making identity operations faster, clearer, and safer."
Barak Perelman, CEO and Co-founder
The $20 million will go toward expanding Opti's product capabilities and scaling its presence in global markets. The timing is right. Opti is seeing strong demand from early adopters, and meaningful expansion opportunities are emerging with design partners who have since converted into paying customers.
As a result, roughly two-thirds of the capital will flow into R&D and engineering. This investment will accelerate the development of Opti's domain-specific models and broaden what the platform can do. The company is also building out its go-to-market foundation as it scales, with a particular focus on reaching customers in finance, retail, healthcare, and technology. These are sectors where identity context, risk reduction, and continuous compliance are not optional but essential.
Opti introduces an automated operating model for identity security. Its AI interprets identity risk, recommends least privilege decisions, and orchestrates clean, safe access across an organization. The platform's pre-trained AI models understand identity context in ways traditional tools simply cannot match.
The system deploys domain-expert large language models trained on curated identity data and frameworks. This allows Opti to interpret complex relationships between users, systems, and access rights. The platform analyzes thousands of data points and their business context to deliver real-time detection of identity vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and overprivileged access.
Beyond detection, Opti provides validated recommendations for least privilege access. Its agentic AI orchestration continuously verifies access corrections while maintaining full human oversight. Compliance models transform access and entitlements into straightforward user access reviews.
Founded in 2024, Opti was built by serial cybersecurity entrepreneurs Barak Perelman, Mille Gandelsman, and Ido Trivizki. But their collaboration goes back nearly a decade. The three first teamed up as co-founders of Indegy, an industrial cybersecurity startup that became a category leader in OT security. Tenable acquired Indegy in 2019, and the founders stayed on in VP roles, leading product and engineering efforts after the deal closed.
That combination of startup experience, shared chemistry, and deep domain expertise eventually led them to a realization. Identity workflows across enterprises follow common patterns. And only purpose-built AI models trained specifically for identity contexts can meaningfully improve them.
Today, the team uses advanced generative AI and specialized large language models to automate identity operations, reduce security risks, and improve compliance. Opti already works with large enterprises across finance, retail, healthcare, and technology. For these organizations, identity management is not just an IT function. It is fundamental to how they operate and protect their customers.
YL Ventures, Mayfield Fund, and Hetz Ventures bring deep expertise and distinct strengths to the table as co-leads of this round.
YL Ventures has a long-standing focus on cybersecurity. Their pattern recognition in scaling security companies and their understanding of the buyer mindset directly influences how Opti shapes both product and go-to-market decisions. Mayfield, meanwhile, has been doubling down on agentic AI investments, with strong conviction around purpose-built models and automation-first architectures. Their perspective aligns closely with how Opti approaches IAM: not by adding AI on top of legacy workflows, but by rethinking the category through intelligent, domain-trained agents. Mayfield's heavy US focus also gives Opti a strong foothold as it expands into the largest and most competitive IAM market.
Hetz Ventures invests in long-term vision, partnering with founders to build companies that endure. This approach resonates with Opti's mission. Hetz's focus on cybersecurity and AI also connects the company to a network of roughly 70 leading AI practitioners and potential US buyers, providing immediate access to the forefront of global AI development and adoption.
"Opti is redefining how enterprises approach identity security. For too long, the space has relied on fragmented, manual, and outdated systems. Opti's AI-native IAM platform introduces a smarter, faster, and more efficient way to manage and mitigate identity risk. Their agentic technology delivers measurable impact by reducing complexity, saving resources, and strengthening enterprise defenses. We're proud to back their vision and partner with this exceptional team."
Yoav Leitersdorf, Managing Partner at YL Ventures
Additional backing from Squared Circle Ventures, LocalGlobe, Maple Capital, and Shlomo Kramer rounds out a diverse investor base with experience across cybersecurity, enterprise software, and early-stage ventures.
