TENEX Raises $27M Series A to Lead the AI-Native Security Operations Era

TENEX.AI, the AI-native cybersecurity company transforming security operations, today announced its $27 million Series A funding round led by Crosspoint Capital Partners, with full participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Shield Capital. This milestone underscores explosive demand for AI-native MDR and positions TENEX as an emerging category leader. In just six months in the market, TENEX has exceeded $10 million in revenue, secured multiple Fortune 500 and Global 2000 customers, and deployed its platform in some of the world’s most demanding high-threat environments.

TENEX’s flagship Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service fuses advanced agentic AI, automation, and elite human expertise to deliver faster detection, high-fidelity triage, and autonomous responses with human guardrails. Built AI-native from the ground up, it integrates seamlessly with Google Cloud and Microsoft-based security ecosystems, enabling unprecedented threat agility and cost savings, as evidenced by TENEX’s rapid customer adoption and revenue growth.

Crosspoint Capital Partners brings decades of cybersecurity leadership to this investment. Managing Partner Greg Clark previously scaled Blue Coat to its $4.65 billion acquisition by Symantec in 2016 and guided the combined entity as CEO through transformative growth. He sees TENEX as a pioneer in AI-driven security operations, aligning with his vision for innovative, scalable threat detection and response.

“At Crosspoint Capital, we back teams that can reshape industries. TENEX is doing exactly that in security services and has raised the standard for MDR,” said Clark. “We believe its AI-native approach to protecting organizations at scale positions TENEX to become the defining MDR platform of the next decade.”

Zach Sivertson, Managing Director at Crosspoint Capital, reinforced the point “We believe TENEX’s unique approach of combining AI innovation with proven human expertise will deliver meaningful improvements in how enterprises detect, investigate, and respond to threats. Crosspoint is proud to back this team.”

The funding will fuel aggressive expansion, including accelerating engineering hires to advance the TENEX agentic AI platform, scaling sales and marketing to capture surging demand, and enhancing support for its rapidly growing enterprise customer base.

Elias “Lou” Manousos, former Microsoft CVP and Chairman of TENEX, highlighted the company’s rapid execution. “In less than a year, TENEX has signed multiple Fortune 500 and Global 2000 customers, and built a cutting-edge AI platform. The company has already exceeded $10M in revenue, and scaled operations globally. TENEX has proven that AI and human ingenuity can create a new standard for cybersecurity resilience. This funding accelerates our momentum and cements our role as the company defining the future of Managed Detection and Response. The market is no longer asking if MDR will be transformed by AI, TENEX is proving the model others will follow.”

Founded by industry veterans who shaped foundational technologies in security operations, TENEX’s team includes CEO Eric Foster (co-founder of Cyderes); CTO Venkata Koppaka (a founding engineer of Google’s core SecOps stack); CRO Edwin Solis (former Google Cloud VP); COO Ryan Shreve (former Garmin, Firemon, Cyderes); CISO Jan Grzymala-Busse (former BMO, Cboe, federal government); and a founding engineering team with extensive expertise building Google Chronicle. This pedigree ensures TENEX not only adopts leading platforms but helped build them, giving enterprises unmatched expertise in cloud-native security. In addition, TENEX has bolstered its leadership team with the appointment of Paul Edmonds as Chief Customer Officer, leveraging his decades of leadership to drive customer success and innovation.

TENEX is built on a core belief: Security operations must evolve to machine-scale decision-making, with human-centric oversight ensuring effective AI adoption. By deploying swarms of intelligent agents to triage alerts, correlate signals, and initiate responses—escalating to humans when necessary—the company delivers superior fidelity, faster decisions, and lower total cost of defense. Customers gain a fully managed service with cloud-native speed and software-native precision, achieving measurable ROI in weeks.

TENEX’s investors echo this confidence. “As a former CISO, I’ve seen firsthand how painful and inefficient traditional security operations can be,” said Zane Lackey, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). “TENEX is solving that problem by fusing automation and AI into a model that actually works for modern enterprises. This is what CISOs have been waiting for.”

Advisor Brandon Dixon, who previously led AI strategy at Microsoft, concurs: “What stands out about TENEX is their execution speed. In just six months, they’ve achieved milestones that take most startups years. The team’s relentless focus, discipline, and ability to operationalize AI show exactly what winning looks like in cybersecurity.”

The round also includes participation from additional strategic investors which will be announced at a later date.

“We believe securing the digital frontier is essential to rebooting the arsenal of democracy,” said Eric Foster, CEO of TENEX.AI. “We’re not here to build another tool. We’re here to reinvent the service layer of cybersecurity: agentic, autonomous, and scaled globally. We’re here to deliver 10x better security outcomes, proving that AI-native MDR is the future of enterprise protection.”

ABOUT TENEX
TENEX is a cybersecurity company leveraging advanced artificial intelligence and human expertise to transform enterprise security. Backed by Crosspoint Capital Partners, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and Shield Capital, TENEX’s flagship offering is a next-generation AI-native Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solution, redefining how organizations detect and respond to threats. With deep expertise in Google and Microsoft security ecosystems and state-of-the-art AI capabilities, TENEX empowers enterprises to enhance threat detection, agility, and resilience while maximizing the value of their security investments.

For more information, visit tenex.ai or contact [email protected].