Why We Raised $250M — And What We’re Going to Do With It
By Eric Foster, CEO, TENEX.AI
We just raised $250M to hire more humans. In the AI era. On purpose. Here’s why.
For my entire career, the bad guys have been winning.
Not because defenders lack talent or the technology doesn’t exist, it’s because the math has been wrong. Attackers scale with automation and defenders scale with headcount. And headcount has never kept up.
Today we’re announcing our Series B led by Crosspoint Capital Partners. This round will fund aggressive hiring, EMEA expansion, deeper partnerships, and continued investment in our leading AI SOC platform that processes 100% of customer alert telemetry in under a minute.
What We’ve Built in
As of this release, in March 2026, we are almost to the day one year in the market – one year since first revenue, after coming out of stealth in early 2025. In that short time, we’ve made absolutely incredible progress:
We serve amazing enterprise customers who trust us with their security operations. We’ve generated over $25M in contracted revenue and 318% year-over-year headcount growth. We are ranked #1 on the 2026 Cyber 150, the definitive ranking of the fastest-growing cybersecurity companies. But the size of the company isn’t what matters, and as much as our industry tends to focus on funding or valuation, that’s not what matters either. We believe we’re going to build the biggest and best security services company to ever exist. But even that isn’t the point — it’s a required step toward the objective that actually matters. We’re keeping the main thing the main thing: making a material difference in cybercrime.
That’s what this funding is for. It’s not a number on a term sheet. It’s a chance to put hundreds more people into the fight this year, armed with AI that makes each of them 10X more effective than they would be anywhere else. The name TENEX reflects this commitment to achieving a tenfold increase in effectiveness. With our human-led but AI-driven service we are able to make a real difference where it matters: 100% of alerts in under a minute, while the industry average SOC reviews roughly 10%. A real 95%+ reduction in false positives, giving defenders back the time to focus on threats that actually matter.
TENEX was fundamentally built AI native, integrating it from the very first line of code, rather than retrofitting AI onto an existing, legacy platform. Our agentic AI triages, investigates, and surfaces findings to human analysts who make every critical decision. AI handles the volume. Humans handle the judgment. That’s not a feature. That’s the architecture. That’s the mission.
Where the Money Goes
This is not a “put it in the bank and figure it out” round. We have a plan.
People. 250+ new hires. Engineers, SOC analysts, sales, customer success. Our hiring philosophy is simple: AI makes our humans ten times more efficient, so every person we add has outsized impact. We are building the highest performing, most capable team in the fight against cybercrime, and we are just getting started.
EMEA Expansion. The international demand signal is clear. Regulatory pressure, expanding attack surfaces, and a severe talent shortage are making traditional SOC models untenable across Europe. We’re building the team and partner infrastructure to meet that demand — and we’re moving fast.
More Partnerships, More Hyper Scale. We are the AI-native services partner that delivers hyperscaler security platform outcomes. With this funding, we build even deeper integrations, more certifications, more co-sell motions, across more partners. This is where scale compounds.
Threat Intelligence & AI R&D. Our AI triage accuracy is already exceeding all expectations and increasing incredibly in both speed and efficacy quarter over quarter. Our AI SOC platform that exists today – which is not the platform that will exist in twelve months.
What Crosspoint Sees
“TENEX has reimagined the managed security services industry and built something differentiated: an AI-native platform with elite human expertise to protect enterprises at scale. The company stops threats with the speed needed to defend an AI-enabled advisory and is delivering that value with an excellent financial model,” said Greg Clark, Managing Partner at Crosspoint Capital Partners. “TENEX provides better gross margins than traditional software, where customers buy an outcome like traditional managed service offerings. With TENEX, there are no trapped resources or associated incremental headcount per customer. The financial opportunity in the AI enablement comes from the market’s underestimation of how AI can transform the value of services industries. The MDR market is massive and can now operate profitably. Crosspoint Capital is excited about this backdrop and the opportunity at TENEX.”
What Comes Next
This is the first time in history that defenders can actually take ground from the enemy. AI gives us the leverage. This funding gives us the fuel. The team we’re building gives us the force.
AI-Native. Human-Led. Together, doing the best work in the fight against cybercrime.
We have a lot more to talk about.
Tenex.ai is an AI-Native, Human-Led managed detection and response company. Learn more at Tenex.AI .