Saudi Arabia’s Wa’ed Ventures, the domestic venture capital arm of Saudi Aramco, has invested in US-based cybersecurity startup StrikeReady as part of a new funding round aimed at supporting the company’s expansion across the Middle East and North Africa and scaling its artificial intelligence-powered security operations platform globally
The investment brings StrikeReady’s total funding raised to $29 million, with the company planning to use the new capital to establish a subsidiary in Saudi Arabia that will serve as its regional headquarters for the MENA market, while expanding its Composite AI platform for enterprise security teams worldwide
StrikeReady develops an artificial intelligence platform for security operations centers that combines pattern-matching and machine-learning automation with large language model-based reasoning. The platform is designed to provide AI-powered coverage across security alerts, incidents, vulnerabilities, assets, identities and threat intelligence, while operating on top of the security tools enterprises already use, including security information and event management, endpoint detection and response, identity and access management, and threat intelligence systems
The company said its approach is designed to address the limitations of consumption-based security tools, where costs associated with data ingestion, automated workflows or AI investigations can influence the level of security coverage available to an organization. StrikeReady’s platform instead provides what it describes as unmetered AI coverage across security operations
In a recent enterprise deployment, StrikeReady customers achieved an 80% reduction in incident investigation times, according to the company. Routine threats can be handled autonomously from investigation through response, allowing security analysts to focus on more complex investigations and proactive defense activities
Anas Algahtani, CEO of Wa’ed Ventures, said the investment reflects the venture capital firm’s view of cybersecurity as an increasingly important component of digital economies. He also highlighted StrikeReady’s technology and its plans to establish a meaningful presence in Saudi Arabia, with Wa’ed Ventures expected to support the company’s expansion and connections across the Kingdom’s technology ecosystem
Beyond the funding, Wa’ed Ventures will support StrikeReady in establishing and scaling its operations in Saudi Arabia, including connections with local innovation partners, strategic organizations and growth opportunities aligned with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 objectives
Data sovereignty is also a key component of StrikeReady’s expansion strategy in Saudi Arabia. The company’s platform is already deployed on Google Cloud’s Saudi Arabia region, allowing security data to remain within the Kingdom, while StrikeReady also offers a self-hosted deployment option for organizations that require full on-premises control
StrikeReady is additionally working with major local hosting providers in Saudi Arabia to give enterprises greater flexibility over where and how their security operations are deployed. As part of its expansion, the company plans to establish the Saudi subsidiary as its MENA headquarters, invest in developing local technology talent and work with Saudi institutions to strengthen domestic capabilities in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity
Yasir Khalid, Founder and CEO of StrikeReady, said Saudi Arabia has become the company’s largest market outside the United States and described the partnership with Wa’ed Ventures as an opportunity to expand its AI-powered security capabilities among organizations responsible for protecting critical assets across the Kingdom
Founded to serve security operations teams managing high volumes of alerts and security events, StrikeReady’s platform is designed to work with existing enterprise security infrastructure rather than requiring organizations to replace their existing tools, while automating investigations and improving the speed and scale of security operations