Opti Secures $20M in Seed Funding to Transform Identity Security

Opti, the AI-native identity and access management (IAM) platform, has raised $20 million in seed funding led by YL Ventures, Mayfield Fund and Hetz Ventures, with participation from Squared Circle Ventures, LocalGlobe, Maple Capital and cybersecurity pioneer Shlomo Kramer. The company plans to accelerate product development and expand globally as demand grows for automated identity security solutions that can keep pace with modern enterprise scale.

Why Identity Security Is Reaching a Breaking Point

Identity sits at the center of every security decision an organization makes—yet it remains one of the most strained and error-prone parts of the cybersecurity stack. Opti highlights a reality most enterprises already know: IAM systems have become too fragmented, too manual, and too slow to protect environments where access changes constantly. Industry research consistently shows that only about half of enterprises feel their IAM investments are truly effective, largely because traditional tools cannot handle the exploding volume of human and machine identities.

The evolution of corporate infrastructure has only amplified this challenge. Cloud adoption, SaaS sprawl, distributed workforces, non-human access, and ephemeral services have all contributed to an exponentially increasing number of permissions that need to be governed. With this comes more misconfigurations, more stale access, and more opportunities for attackers to exploit.

Automation is becoming the only scalable answer. Studies referenced in the announcement show that applying AI to cybersecurity workflows can dramatically improve efficiency and threat detection—some sectors see improvements of up to 98%. Opti aims to bring that level of precision to identity security by replacing static, manual IAM processes with continuous, AI-native reasoning.

Opti’s AI-Native Approach to IAM

Rather than layering AI on top of legacy frameworks, Opti has built its platform around domain-specific large language models trained to understand identity data in context. According to the company’s platform overview on the Opti website, this AI engine analyzes human and machine identities, services, permissions, applications and systems, mapping them into a unified identity graph that can interpret organizational behavior in real time.

From that foundation, Opti offers three key capabilities:

• Real-time detection of identity vulnerabilities and misconfigurations
• Validated least-privilege recommendations generated by identity-trained models
• Agentic orchestration that can safely execute access corrections with human oversight

The system’s ability to “understand” identity relationships is what sets it apart. Instead of treating access as a static list of entitlements, Opti evaluates how access is used, where risk accumulates and how permissions relate to business context. This allows enterprises to adapt their IAM operations continuously rather than relying on quarterly reviews or reactive audits.

In the words of CEO and Co-Founder Barak Perelman, identity has become “a massive data ecosystem that enterprises struggle to control.” Opti’s goal is to give security teams an intelligence layer that automates the complexity, not just visualizes it.

The Market Signals Behind the Round

For years, identity governance has lagged behind other areas of cybersecurity in terms of automation. Companies have relied heavily on spreadsheets, manual access reviews and brittle workflow rules that fail under real-world scale. This creates not only operational inefficiency but real risk.

By raising this $20 million seed round—one of the more substantial early-stage financings in the IAM space—Opti’s investors are signaling that identity automation is no longer optional. Enterprises are seeking faster, more accurate ways to reduce overprivileged access, eliminate entitlement sprawl, and ensure compliance with ever-tightening regulatory standards.

The presence of investors such as YL Ventures and cybersecurity veteran Shlomo Kramer underscores the belief that identity security will become a cornerstone of the next decade of enterprise security innovation.

What This Means for the Future of Identity Security

Beyond the immediate funding news, Opti’s model reflects a deeper shift in how enterprises are beginning to treat identity itself. Historically, IAM has been seen as an administrative domain—a necessary but tedious set of processes designed to maintain order. But as organizations grow more digital and interconnected, identity is transitioning into a living, dynamic system that requires constant monitoring, adaptation and verification.

AI-native IAM platforms introduce a future where access decisions can be continuously evaluated, permissions can be adjusted in real time and identity risk can be understood as it evolves—not after the fact. This redefines identity from a back-office function into a real-time security control plane.

The broader implication is that as enterprises adopt AI agents, machine identities and automated workflows, identity security must evolve from static governance to intelligent orchestration. Identity will increasingly become the backbone not just of cybersecurity, but of operational trust across automated systems.

Opti’s funding marks an early step in that transformation. The company’s platform represents a shift toward identity ecosystems that can reason, predict and act. For organizations grappling with entitlement sprawl, compliance overhead and expanding attack surfaces, this signals a future where IAM is not just manageable—but intelligently automated.