Startup Torq Secures $70M to Advance Hyperautomation With AI

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Torq said its Series C funding round will allow the New York-based company to expand its use of AI to automate Level 1 analysis, conduct threat hunting and perform autonomous investigations. CEO Ofer Smadari said Torq plans to use the $70 million to accelerate product development and geographic expansion, with a focus on navigating language barriers and local laws to enter additional countries.

“We’re going to go deep to second-tier investigations, meaning threat modeling that will help our customers to achieve a lot more and understand how to build their threat hunting workflow,” Smadari said. “We believe that there are some ways to use AI agents just on security events to understand better and provide lots of information analytics even before you’re building out your automations.”

Bringing Generative AI to Higher-Level Tasks

Torq, founded in 2020, employs 187 people and has raised $192 million in six rounds of outside funding. The company has been led since inception by Smadari, who previously started and led browser security startup Luminate Security before selling it to Symantec in 2019. Torq’s Series C round was led by Evolution Equity, which has experience scaling companies and supporting operational efficiencies, he said (see: Torq CEO on Series B Funds: Driving AI and Hyperautomation)

“They understand how fast the market is growing, and they bring to the table expertise in building operations at big companies, mature companies and efficient companies,” Smadari told Information Security Media Group. “We feel like this is what we need right now.”

Torq wants to use the $70 million to build upon the ability of its Socrates AI agent to autonomously perform Level 1 security analysis and move into having AI handle more complex threat hunting and threat modeling tasks. Socrates can perform investigations, create workflow automations and complete security cases autonomously, and Smadari said Torq plans to push deeper into AI-based automation.

“Socrates is an AI agent that can read instructions for the analyst, what to do when something is getting in, and how to investigate like the Level 1 analyst,” Smadari said. “And it can take all the instructions and do all the work by itself. Our agent can do today all the work that a Level 1 analyst needs to do.”

Smadari said the firm is incorporating generative AI into its platform, allowing users to build workflows in plain English and perform autonomous investigations. Future tools will double down on infrastructure and development that enhance AI capabilities and leverage the vast amounts of data that Torq collects from more than 800 integrations to improve security automation and analysis, according to Smadari.

“You can just say in English what you would like to work with, and we are building the drag-and-drop workflow for you,” Smadari said.

Extending Its Reach Beyond North America

Torq plans to expand into Europe and Asia-Pacific while maintaining a strong presence in the United States, where Smadari said 85% of the company’s business is based today. Although language and legal differences can make operating outside of North America difficult, Torq sees strong potential in going beyond the U.S. and into countries such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore.

“In Europe, the best countries are the ones that have some big organizations,” Smadari said. “Because you want to invest and have a predictable revenue stream, you need to understand, ‘Who are the customers?’ and ‘How easy is it to get in?'”

Torq primarily competes against legacy security orchestration, automation and response players such as Phantom, which was acquired by Splunk for $350 million in April 2018, and Demisto, which was acquired by Palo Alto Networks for $560 million in February 2019. Smadari said Torq’s use of AI and automation enables the company to replace older systems such as Phantom and Demisto more efficiently.

More than 80% of Torq’s revenue currently comes from channel partners, and Smadari said Torq will use the Series C proceeds to expand its sales, marketing and technical teams in the United States. Torq also plans to focus on events and thought leadership to position the firm as a leader in AI-driven security operations, according to Smadari.

“It’s a lot easier to build attacks today with AI, and we see the number of events is rising on a weekly basis,” Smadari said. “They’re getting like 10% more every week because of the ease of use of AI to attack. So we see a tremendous trend with more alerts and security events that are coming in the stack.”