TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 14, 2026--
Novee, an emerging leader in AI offensive security, today announced its out-of-stealth launch with $51.5 million in total funding, led by YL Ventures, Canaan Partners and Oren Zeev (Zeev Ventures).
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The company raised its Series A round within four months of founding – one of the fastest funding trajectories in the offensive security sector, driven by rapid customer traction, an elite team spanning AI research and offensive cybersecurity backgrounds and growing urgency as AI-powered cyberattacks accelerate.
Attackers are already leveraging AI to operate at machine speed, automating reconnaissance, continuously probing systems and weaponizing weaknesses faster than defenders can respond. To keep up, defense must move at the same pace. Yet security testing remains tethered to human-scale workflows. While software is now built and deployed continuously, penetration testing still happens episodically or relies on shallow automation. Organizations are no longer defending against static threats. They’re up against automated, adaptive adversaries who can exploit a vulnerability in the time it takes a human tester to open a ticket, leaving dangerous blind spots deep inside production environments.
Novee closes this gap by transforming elite offensive tradecraft into continuous, AI-driven penetration testing, simulating the sophisticated tactics of real-world hackers. It’s the only penetration testing platform capable of uncovering novel vulnerabilities, including complex business logic flaws that previously only the most advanced manual pentesters could find. From initial exploit validation to automated retesting, Novee provides an end-to-end loop that confirms critical risks are not just identified, but permanently removed.
“Traditional DAST tools struggled to surface issues that actually matter to us. We needed testing that could identify more complex vulnerabilities, like server-side request forgery, which scanners just aren’t capable of detecting. Novee filled that gap by consistently uncovering higher-quality findings that we simply weren’t seeing before,” said Robert Kugler, Head of Security, IT and Compliance at Cresta.
While other AI penetration testing platforms rely on generic AI models optimized for text and general reasoning, Novee has built a proprietary, purpose-trained, patent-pending AI model designed specifically for offensive security. Trained on real-world exploitation techniques, tools and workflows, Novee’s proprietary AI model outperformed frontier LLMs such as Gemini 2.5 Pro and Claude 4 Sonnet by over 55% on constrained web exploitation challenges, achieving up to 90% accuracy where general-purpose models typically plateau at around 65%.
“Novee’s benchmarks show a clear performance advantage for their proprietary AI pentesting model over frontier LLMs,” said Tal Shapira, Ph.D., CTO at Reco AI. “Because success is measured through live exploit execution rather than proxy metrics, the results are particularly strong and methodologically sound. From an AI research perspective, this reinforces a broader truth: penetration testing is an adversarial, environment-driven problem, and purpose-trained models will consistently outperform general-purpose language models in this domain.”
“Attackers don’t wait for your annual pentest. Neither should your defense,” said Ido Geffen, co-founder and CEO of Novee. “What security teams actually need are high-signal findings they can trust: novel vulnerabilities that are proven exploitable. Novee has already helped organizations uncover hundreds of these novel vulnerabilities and fix them continuously, closing gaps before attackers exploit them.”
Novee was founded in May 2025 by Ido Geffen (CEO), Gon Chalamish (CPO) and Omer Ninburg (CTO), veteran offensive security leaders from the Israel Defense Force’s most elite cyber programs, who led nation-state–level offensive security operations.
“Novee is built by a team that has spent decades operating at the highest levels of offensive cyber and critical infrastructure defense,” said Yoav Leitersdorf, Managing Partner at YL Ventures. “They understand how real attackers think because they have done this work themselves, at scale and under real-world constraints. What they are building reflects a deep understanding of how AI is reshaping the balance between attack and defense. As AI changes the speed and nature of attacks, offensive security becomes a continuous capability, not a periodic exercise. Novee is executing on that shift with rare technical rigor and conviction.”
“What convinced us wasn’t just the vision; it was the urgency of the moment and the speed of real-world adoption,” said Joydeep Bhattacharyya, General Partner at Canaan Ventures. “As cybersecurity enters an AI-driven arms race, enterprises need continuous penetration testing—and Novee is delivering exactly that. In just a few months, the team has strategic customers across financial services, healthcare, technology and manufacturing. We’re excited to back a team with deep expertise, strong product-market fit and the potential to define this category.”
To learn more about Novee’s revolutionary platform and book a demo, visit novee.security.
About Novee
Novee ( novee.security ) is the AI penetration testing platform built to secure constantly changing environments against attackers operating at machine speed. Its purpose-trained AI reasons like a real attacker, uncovers novel attack paths continuously, and delivers precise, personalized fixes so teams can stay one step ahead of hackers. Founded by national-level offensive security leaders Ido Geffen, Gon Chalamish, and Omer Ninburg, Novee has raised $51.5 million within four months of its inception from leading investors including YL Ventures, Canaan Partners, and Zeev Ventures. Learn more at novee.security.
About YL Ventures
YL Ventures is a venture capital firm dedicated exclusively to cybersecurity. For nearly two decades, the firm has partnered with top Israeli founders from inception, helping build category-leading companies that define the market. With offices in Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv and $800M under management, YL Ventures provides access to an unrivaled network of CISOs and industry leaders, shaping the next generation of Israeli cybersecurity innovation. Repeatedly recognized by PitchBook and TIME magazine for both performance and influence, YL Ventures stands at the forefront of cybersecurity venture capital.
Novee Emerges From Stealth With $51.5M to Counter AI Cyberattacks With a Proprietary AI Hacker
