Seattle-based startup Oleria, specializing in helping businesses manage employee access to applications and data, recently secured $33.1 million in a Series A funding round. GeekWire had initially reported this development upon discovering an SEC filing. Oleria is now elaborating on its plans for the funds and its growth strategy, which includes expanding its current 20-person team threefold within the next year.
The company, which debuted from stealth mode last year, offers software aimed at assisting businesses in preventing and managing security breaches in a rapidly evolving cybersecurity environment. Oleria’s software focuses on automating various security tasks and simplifying the management of internal access to complex back-end systems, often entangled with outdated software and manual processes.
CEO Jim Alkove of Oleria emphasized the increasing importance and complexity of understanding and managing who has access to what resources within a company. Oleria is primarily focusing on large enterprises with over 1,000 employees and has already started onboarding paying customers. The company anticipates making its product widely available soon.
Alkove, who has a background as the former chief trust officer at Salesforce and an advisor for the World Economic Forum’s Global Center for Cybersecurity, highlighted the dual role of AI in both enhancing access understanding and threat detection and in posing new risks as hackers exploit the technology. He remarked, “We have only seen the tip of the iceberg regarding the potential impact of AI on security.”
Jagadeesh Kunda, co-founder of Oleria and former chief product officer at cloud directory platform JumpCloud, has significant experience from previous engineering leadership roles at Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft.
Oleria has attracted notable investors, including Salesforce Ventures, Evolution Equity Partners (which led the Series A round), Tapestry VC, and Zscaler, bringing its total funding to over $40 million. Taher Elgamal, a partner at Evolution and former CTO of security at Salesforce, praised Oleria for advancing cybersecurity to meet current and future challenges in identity security. Elgamal, along with former Mandiant COO John Watters, will be joining Oleria’s board.
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