Ent Security, founded by the RiskIQ team behind Microsoft Security Copilot, emerged from stealth with a $100M seed round led by Decibel, with participation from Sequoia, Crosspoint Capital, and In-Q-Tel. The startup argues that AI has made real-time threat prevention viable again by running small AI models locally on endpoints, enabling sub-second decisions before attacks complete — bypassing the cloud round-trip that forced the industry to settle for detection-after-the-fact. Ent's 'workspace security' platform monitors apps, browsers, chat tools, and AI assistants to infer user intent and intervene at the moment of decision. The company claims production deployments with Global 2000 customers in hospitality, financial services, and defence. Critics note that 'prevention is back' is becoming a crowded pitch, capability claims lack independent benchmarks, and Ent faces entrenched competition from CrowdStrike and Microsoft.
