Circumvent raises $6 million to advance proactive AI cloud security

Circumvent has secured $6 million in early-stage funding to advance the development and commercial rollout of its proactive cloud security platform.

This investment has been led by Paladin Capital Group, an investor focused on cybersecurity and secure artificial intelligence, and will enable Circumvent to launch its multi-agent AI system designed to assist cloud and security teams with managing and resolving security alerts across complex infrastructures.

Platform approach

Circumvent's platform addresses the challenge faced by organisations overwhelmed by high volumes of alerts originating from multiple security tools in their cloud infrastructure and application environments. The system uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to ingest, correlate, and enhance alerts from a broad set of cloud-native, open-source, and third-party sources.

By connecting these alerts with up-to-date business context, Circumvent aims to streamline risk prioritisation and allow teams to focus on source-level remediation tasks that are most critical to their operations.

Circumvent was founded by Michael Watts and Thomas Bui. Watts previously established Cloud Conformity, a former Paladin Capital Group portfolio company that was acquired by Trend Micro in 2019. Bui, now Chief Technology Officer at Circumvent, brings experience from the banking sector, government, and a previous tenure at Uber. The co-founders have worked together in the past, building technology products targeted at complex business challenges.

Multi-Agent AI system

At the core of Circumvent's solution is a Multi-Agent AI System. This is described as a coordinated network of intelligent agents responsible for managing prioritisation and remediation activities at large scale. These agents are designed to act autonomously, adapting to each customer's specific cloud environment and supporting what Circumvent terms a guided remediation experience. The company reports that it is currently partnering with several large enterprises across the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, particularly those with significant cloud infrastructure on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

"Security and cloud teams are under immense pressure to move fast without increasing risk," said Michael Watts, co-founder and CEO of Circumvent. "We're not just generating more alerts—we're building the intelligence layer that helps teams understand what to fix, why it's important, and how to take immediate action to resolve the root cause."

Thomas Bui, co-founder and CTO, stated, "By aligning alerts with real-time business context, Circumvent ruthlessly prioritises risks, identifies root causes, and enables engineering teams to take precise, targeted remediation actions at the source. The platform is built to integrate seamlessly into existing DevSecOps workflows, improving security efficiency without slowing innovation."

Funding allocation

The funding from Paladin Capital Group will be used to accelerate product development and support early engagement with customers. Part of the investment will also fund the establishment of Circumvent's new commercial headquarters in San Francisco, while continuing to base its research and development activities in Australia. The San Francisco office is expected to underpin Circumvent's expansion into the United States and increased global outreach.

"We're thrilled to be working again with Michael Watts and the exceptional founding team at Circumvent," said Tom Clute, Principal at Paladin Capital Group. "Our mission is to support entrepreneurs who are transforming cybersecurity through innovation from the ground up. Circumvent is addressing one of the most critical challenges in cloud security today: closing the gap between identifying risks and driving effective, scalable remediation."

Company operations

Circumvent reports that its solution is intended to automate the triage and prioritisation of alerts, minimising manual intervention and addressing alert fatigue among security operations staff. The platform aims to deliver remediation recommendations with human verification, allowing security teams to address risks more efficiently and at their source.

With this funding, Circumvent and Paladin Capital Group are seeking to address what they describe as a significant shortfall in the current market: the ability for enterprises to not only identify risks in the cloud but also to remediate them effectively and at scale.