Protect AI
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
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Sections to complete：02 · 05
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Protect AI was a Seattle AI-security (MLSecOps) startup founded in 2022 by former engineering leaders from Amazon, Oracle and AWS: CEO Ian Swanson, CTO Badar Ahmed and president Daryan Dehghanpisheh. It helped enterprises secure machine-learning systems across the AI pipeline, from data to deployment. Its flagship AI Radar created a machine-learning bill of materials, and its open-source model scanners and huntr community (15,000+ security researchers finding AI/ML vulnerabilities) were widely adopted. It raised $108.5 million, including a $60 million Series B led by Evolution Equity in 2024.
02 / FAILURE REASONS
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03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
Protect AI founded in Seattle by Ian Swanson, Badar Ahmed and Daryan Dehghanpisheh to secure ML systems.
- $60M Series B
Raised a $60 million Series B led by Evolution Equity, bringing total funding to $108.5 million.
- Acquired by Palo Alto Networks
In April 2025 Palo Alto Networks acquired Protect AI for over $500 million, folding it into its AI-native security platform to defend against threats like model manipulation, prompt injection and training-data poisoning.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN / AFTERMATH
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