Sarasota-Based Tech Firm Powered by AI Secures $27 Million in Funding

A Sarasota cybersecurity company, TENEX.ai, has successfully secured $27 million in a Series A funding round, as announced in a statement on September 11.

Based in south Sarasota County on Potter Park Drive, TENEX.ai plans to utilize these funds to drive substantial expansion efforts, including rapidly hiring engineers, scaling up sales and marketing activities, and enhancing customer support, according to the statement.

The Series A round was led by California’s Crosspoint Capital Partners, with full participation from renowned venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Shield Capital from Silicon Valley. Additional unspecified strategic investors also participated. Andreessen Horowitz manages around $46 billion in assets and has a history of investing in major tech firms, including Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, and others.

TENEX.ai’s core offering is its managed detection and response (MDR) service, developed from the ground up with artificial intelligence. This service aids organizations in identifying and addressing cyber threats through AI agents that “triage alerts, correlate signals, and initiate responses,” which are then escalated to human operators when necessary. The company emphasizes that the future of cybersecurity lies in “machine-scale decision-making” coupled with human oversight.

“We’re not here to build another tool. We’re here to reinvent the service layer of cybersecurity: agentic, autonomous, and scaled globally,” said TENEX.ai CEO Eric Foster in a statement.

Founded in 2024, TENEX.ai aims to revolutionize enterprise security, as per its LinkedIn profile.

“In less than a year, TENEX has signed multiple Fortune 500 and Global 2000 clients, while also developing a state-of-the-art AI platform. The company has already surpassed $10 million in revenue and has expanded operations on a global scale,” stated TENEX Chairman Elias “Lou” Manousos, a former Microsoft executive.

“This funding propels our momentum and solidifies our position as the defining force in the future of Managed Detection and Response,” Manousos added. “The market is past the point of asking if AI will transform MDR; TENEX is setting the standard that others will follow.”