Venice emerges from stealth with $33M to reinvent privileged access management for the AI era

Most major breaches still trace back to a simple failure: someone had access they shouldn’t have had. A stolen credential. An over-permissioned admin account. A machine identity was left open long after a project ended.

Security teams have spent decades trying to manage privileged access with vaults, password rotation, and approval chains built for on-prem servers and small IT teams. That world no longer exists. Enterprises now juggle tens of thousands of human, machine, and AI-driven identities across cloud platforms, SaaS apps, internal systems, and automated workflows. Access is no longer static. It shifts by the minute.

Venice, formerly known as Valkyrie, believes the old model has reached its limits. Today, the company is launching from stealth with $33 million in total funding, including a $25 million Series A led by IVP, with participation from Index Ventures, Vine Ventures, Holly Ventures, and angel investors Assaf Rappaport of Wiz, Dor Knafo, and Gil Azrielant of Axis Security.

The company’s premise is straightforward: eliminate standing privilege entirely.

Instead of permanent access that lingers in the background, Venice grants permissions in real time and removes them the moment they are no longer needed. That shift matters. According to industry data, 86% of breaches involve stolen or compromised credentials. Permanent access turns every credential into a potential time bomb.

“The way organisations manage access isn’t keeping up with how business operates today,” said Rotem Lurie, co-founder and CEO of Venice. “Teams move faster, environments shift constantly, and AI is accelerating operations across the enterprise and threat actors. Access control needs to match that tempo. Venice is on a mission to provide real-time access, granted only when required, and removed the moment it’s not. We appreciate the support of our investors as we bring this needed approach to the market.”

Lurie is no stranger to identity security. She previously led product at Axis Security and was recognized in Forbes 30 Under 30. Her co-founder and CTO, Or Vaknin, was part of the founding teams at Transmit Security and Flow Security. Both have spent years building identity and access systems inside high-growth cybersecurity companies.

Their experience shows in the architecture. Venice does not rely on agents, proxies, or heavy deployment layers. The platform discovers identities and entitlements across cloud, SaaS, on-prem, and AI-driven environments, then enforces contextual access controls from a single control plane. Enterprises can see who—or what—has access to sensitive systems at any time.

With $33M in Funding, Venice Launches to Secure Human, Machine, and AI Identities Across the Enterprise

The timing is hard to ignore. AI systems now operate alongside human users inside enterprise environments. Machine identities outnumber human identities by a wide margin in many organizations. Each automated workflow, integration, or AI agent carries its own permissions. Static access policies struggle to keep up.

“What stood out about Rotem and her team was their clarity of mission,” said Cack Wilhelm, General Partner at IVP. “Enterprises can’t rely on static access in a world where identities shift by the second, and AI is accelerating the speed at which attackers exploit privileged access. Venice’s adaptive system will set a new standard for how global organizations operate and protect themselves.”

Venice says it already works with Fortune 500 enterprises across finance, media, hospitality, manufacturing, healthcare, and technology. The startup reports a 99% reduction in standing privileges among customers adopting its model. That figure, if sustained at scale, signals a significant shift from traditional PAM systems that rely on vaulting and periodic review.

The company is based in Tel Aviv and New York and reports that women make up 40% of its team, a notable figure in cybersecurity, where gender representation has long lagged.

Privileged Access Management has historically been a slow-moving category. Large vendors dominate it. Enterprises tolerate friction in exchange for compliance checkboxes. Venice is betting that AI-driven environments change that equation. Static controls no longer match dynamic systems.

In a market crowded with incremental updates, Venice argues for something more fundamental: access should exist only at the exact moment it is needed and disappear immediately afterward.

If the next wave of enterprise breaches continues to center on identity misuse, that argument may resonate far beyond the cybersecurity team.