A nascent Israeli-American technology firm, Venice, has officially emerged from stealth mode, announcing a $20 million Series A funding round and articulating an ambitious goal: to displace established cybersecurity giants like CyberArk and Okta within major corporations over the next 18 months. This audacious claim positions the 35-person startup as a formidable contender in the rapidly evolving and critically important domain of identity and access management.

The Expanding Frontier of Digital Identity

The contemporary digital landscape is grappling with an escalating "permissions problem." As organizations increasingly adopt advanced technologies—from sophisticated chatbots and artificial intelligence agents to myriad automated systems—the imperative to securely assign, monitor, and revoke their digital credentials, permissions, and identities has grown exponentially. This proliferation of "non-human" entities operating across corporate networks, coupled with the persistent challenge of managing human access, has fueled a significant surge in demand for robust identity and access management (IAM) solutions. Venture capital, recognizing this critical market need, has been actively channeling investments into innovative startups in this sector.

Historically, IAM systems focused primarily on managing human users, ensuring they had appropriate access to resources based on their roles. Early iterations involved simple username and password combinations, which quickly proved insufficient against a backdrop of evolving cyber threats. The introduction of multi-factor authentication (MFA) and more granular role-based access control (RBAC) marked significant advancements. However, the advent of cloud computing, the proliferation of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, and now, the explosion of AI-driven automation, have introduced unprecedented layers of complexity. Each new digital entity, whether a human employee, a contractor, a server, or an AI agent, represents a potential entry point for attackers if its access is not meticulously managed. This complex, interconnected web of identities and permissions is precisely the challenge Venice aims to simplify.

Venice’s Vision and Foundational Funding

Venice, founded just over two years ago, recently closed its Series A funding round in December, attracting significant investment from IVP, which led the round, with continued participation from Index Ventures, the firm that spearheaded its earlier seed funding. This capital infusion signals strong investor confidence in Venice’s differentiated approach and its leadership team. The company’s core strategy revolves around offering a unified platform designed to manage privileged access across a diverse array of IT environments, including legacy on-premises systems and modern cloud infrastructure.

This hybrid capability is a crucial distinguishing factor for Venice in a crowded market. Many of its well-funded competitors, such as Persona (which secured a $200 million Series D last April), Veza (closing a $108 million Series D in May 2025), and GitGuardian SAS (raising $50 million recently), often specialize in cloud-native or specific niche solutions. By contrast, Venice’s commitment to addressing both cloud-based and traditional on-premises environments, while technically more demanding to build, strategically positions it to cater to the vast number of large enterprises still operating complex, mixed IT ecosystems. These organizations typically grapple with the challenges of integrating disparate security tools across their heterogeneous infrastructure, a problem Venice seeks to alleviate with its consolidated platform.

The Architect Behind the Ambition

At the helm of Venice is 31-year-old Rotem Lurie, an entrepreneur whose professional trajectory aligns with many of the qualities venture capitalists seek. Born to two programmer parents in Israel—her mother being one of the country’s pioneering female software engineers—Lurie’s formative experiences provided a strong foundation in technology. She completed a four-and-a-half-year tenure as a lieutenant in Unit 8200, Israel’s renowned elite intelligence corps. This unit is globally recognized as a crucible for cybersecurity talent, often serving as a springboard for successful tech entrepreneurs and innovators.

Following her military service, Lurie transitioned to Microsoft, where she served as a product manager, contributing to the development of what would eventually become Microsoft Defender for Identity, a key component in enterprise security. Her journey continued at Axis Security, an access management startup, where she was the first product hire. Axis Security was subsequently acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise for $500 million in 2022, a testament to the value of its solutions in the access management space. Just prior to the completion of that acquisition, Lurie made a strategic move to YL Ventures, a prominent cybersecurity-focused venture firm. This brief but impactful period provided her with an invaluable vantage point into the startup ecosystem. During her time there, Lurie observed a prevalent pattern among many young companies: an overarching strategy centered on building technology primarily for acquisition. This realization solidified her conviction that a different, longer-term approach was essential for truly disruptive innovation.

Reshaping Privileged Access Management

Lurie’s insights from YL Ventures underscored the necessity of a sustained, comprehensive strategy to effectively challenge market leaders like CyberArk, which has long held a dominant position in the privileged access management (PAM) sector. PAM is a subset of IAM that focuses specifically on managing elevated access rights within an organization, crucial for protecting sensitive data and critical infrastructure from insider threats and external attacks. To truly unseat incumbents, Lurie recognized the need for technology that is both deep in its capabilities and broad enough in its scope to support the intricate, hybrid IT environments characteristic of most large enterprises.

The technical challenge Venice addresses is significant: many identity and access management teams within large corporations are forced to juggle approximately ten different tools to oversee who and what has access to their systems. This fragmented approach leads to operational inefficiencies, increased costs, and critical security gaps. Venice’s platform aims to consolidate this disparate collection of tools into a single, cohesive system. This integrated solution manages privileged access across a spectrum of environments, encompassing on-premises servers, a multitude of SaaS applications, and various cloud infrastructures, catering to both human and non-human entities.

Lurie emphasizes that this consolidation, "tying everything together," is what resonates most with customers. Venice operates on a SaaS subscription model, but its competitive edge, according to Lurie, isn’t primarily price. Instead, it’s the dramatic reduction in the "overhead" associated with traditional enterprise security deployments. This overhead often includes substantial consultant fees and lengthy, complex implementation processes that can stretch from six months to two years, effectively becoming an unavoidable "tax" for organizations. Venice leverages AI-powered automation to streamline this process, claiming to cut implementation times to a mere week-and-a-half, a stark contrast to industry norms. This rapid deployment capability not only reduces costs but also accelerates time-to-value for customers, a significant differentiator in a market where agility is increasingly prized.

Early Traction and Investor Confidence

The market appears to be responding positively to Venice’s approach. Lurie asserts that Venice is already "completely replacing" legacy vendors at Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies. While refraining from publicly naming clients, she has confidentially indicated that their customer base includes a venerable 170-year-old publicly traded manufacturing giant and a global music conglomerate, signaling early wins with diverse, established enterprises.

Investor confidence further bolsters Venice’s position. Cack Wilhelm, the partner at IVP who led Venice’s Series A round, praised Lurie’s vision, noting that "the problem with most cybersecurity pitches is everyone’s tackling something too small to ever be material." Wilhelm draws parallels between Lurie’s "audacious" approach and the foundational strategies of other cybersecurity giants like CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks, which embarked on ambitious missions from their inception.

Wilhelm also highlighted the escalating urgency created by the proliferation of AI agents as a key driver for IVP’s investment thesis. In a future where individuals might command dozens of AI agents working on their behalf, traditional privileged access tools—designed for a more static world of human IT professionals—are becoming obsolete. The need for identity concepts to adapt to this dynamic environment is paramount. Breaches frequently exploit compromised credentials; therefore, solutions offering "just-in-time" permissions, precisely scoped to the individual and the specific moment of need, are critical for enhancing security posture. This forward-thinking perspective aligns with Venice’s focus on managing both human and non-human identities with granular, contextual access controls.

A Dynamic Market and Diverse Leadership

The identity and access management market, while crowded, remains eager for innovative solutions. Industry projections underscore this demand: spending on identity and access management was anticipated to surpass $24 billion in 2025, representing a 13% increase from the previous year, according to the Identity Management Institute. This robust growth trajectory suggests ample opportunity for new players who can deliver tangible improvements over existing offerings.

Venice’s operational structure reflects a globalized approach, with its research and development operations centered in Israel, leveraging the country’s deep pool of cybersecurity talent, while its go-to-market team operates out of North America. This dual-location strategy allows the company to tap into diverse expertise and market opportunities. Notably, Venice stands out in the technology sector, particularly in the historically male-dominated field of cybersecurity, with nearly half of its workforce comprised of women.

Rotem Lurie’s co-founder, Or Vaknin, serves as the company’s Chief Technology Officer, forming a complementary leadership team. The company’s investor roster also includes prominent figures like Assaf Rappaport, co-founder and CEO of Wiz, and Raaz Herzberg, CMO at Wiz and a former colleague of Lurie from their intern days at Microsoft. This network of influential individuals within the cybersecurity ecosystem provides Venice with valuable mentorship and strategic connections.

For Lurie, who acknowledges spending much of her career as "the only woman in the room," cultivating a balanced team was not a calculated strategic move but a natural outcome of creating an inclusive environment. She believes that visibility and representation are crucial, stating, "You can never see yourself doing something if you didn’t see someone like you doing it." This philosophy naturally attracts other women, fostering a sense of belonging and empowerment within the organization.

The fundamental question that now faces Venice is whether its two-year head start and early successes with Fortune 500 clients will be sufficient to fend off well-capitalized competitors as they vie for the same high-value enterprise buyers. The broader identity management market faces a critical juncture: will it sustain multiple winners, or will it follow the historical trajectory of other security categories, eventually consolidating around one or two dominant players? Venice’s journey will undoubtedly offer a compelling case study in market disruption and innovation within the vital cybersecurity landscape.