Amir SohailSAN FRANCISCO, July 15, 2026 (ZM NEWSWIRE) —
Backed by Foundation Capital and Zetta Venture Partners with $8M in seed funding, Pulse Security delivers the program intelligence and agentic infrastructure that security leaders have been missing.
Pulse Security AI launched from stealth today to solve a problem the security industry has spent decades ignoring: giving the leader who runs the program the same operational foundation every other business function takes for granted.
The company raised $8M in seed funding led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Zetta Venture Partners. The funding accelerates Pulse’s engineering and go-to-market efforts to meet enterprise demand from security leaders ready to modernize how their programs are run.
The CISO Has Been the Forgotten User in the Security Organization
For decades, the industry developed increasingly effective tools for practitioners. SOC analysts, threat hunters, vulnerability management teams, and every other function within a security program have purpose-built technical infrastructure. Yet, the program itself is managed through spreadsheets, slide decks, tribal knowledge, and a lot of “human middleware”.
The pressure is intensifying. NIST reports CVE submissions rose 263% from 2020 to 2025. VulnCheck found 884 newly exploited vulnerabilities in 2025 alone, with nearly 29% exploited on or before the day of CVE publication. Frontier AI models are compressing response windows further by accelerating discovery and exploit validation. At the same time, SEC disclosure rules have moved cyber risk into the boardroom, where most directors still struggle to translate technical data into business risk.
That gap has consequences. CISOs are now accountable to boards and regulators for outcomes they cannot operationalize at the speed the business and modern threats demand. Organizational sprawl to cover vast IT environments adds complexity. They are asked to translate technical risk into business risk with no system of record connecting the two. In more than 80 CISO interviews conducted by Pulse Security, a recurring theme emerged: Security leaders lack a continuously up-to-date, authoritative system they can stand behind in the boardroom, with their executive peers, or under regulatory scrutiny.
Brett Wahlin, CIO of Aurora, notes, “Security teams often get lost in technical complexity, but CISOs must remain focused on overarching business risk. Success requires a clear understanding of a security program’s health and the ability to translate technical data into strategic insights. The industry has long needed a system of record that provides ground truth, transforming daily operations into meaningful, business-driven intelligence.”
Pulse Builds the Foundation, Not Another Tool
Currently, the security function manages its program through a morass of spreadsheets, policies that quickly go stale, and disconnected tools. People are asked to fill in the gaps, which adds to toil and job dissatisfaction. Pulse goes upstream as an AI layer that leverages existing sources. The platform is built on a context graph architecture that sits above the technical silos security teams already run, including EDR, cloud, identity, and the unstructured data sources that hold most of the program’s institutional knowledge, such as assessment reports, communication documents, and tracking spreadsheets. By integrating the full scope of a security program – the risks, the technical environment, the regulatory obligations, the people, and the business priorities – Pulse gives security leaders the consolidated knowledge they need to formulate strategy, automate program-level workflows, communicate with clarity, and lead with authority.
Pulse Security AI was co-founded by product & security experts Mike Armistead, Robert Hipps, and Nick Gilligan. Armistead and Hipps previously co-founded Respond Software, the AI-driven SOC automation company that FireEye/Mandiant acquired for $186 million in 2020. Before that, Armistead co-founded Fortify Software, which pioneered the application security category and was acquired by HP in 2010. Gilligan was among Respond’s first technical hires and later led AI engineering teams at Mandiant and Google.
“We were fortunate to work closely with the Pulse team through our early investment in Respond, so I know they can deliver real transformation in security,” said Sid Trivedi, Partner at Foundation Capital. “The problem Pulse addresses is massive, expensive, and still solved largely by human effort. CISOs face accelerating risks that siloed technologies cannot address. At the same time, the CISO role within a company has been elevated to include regular board engagement. Pulse’s agentic platform gives security leaders the strategic command they have been missing to present a comprehensive picture of their program.”“Security leaders today are expected to make high-stakes decisions across an increasingly complex organization, yet most still operate across fragmented tools, endless workflows, and incomplete visibility,” said Apoorva Pandhi, Managing Director at Zetta Venture Partners. “Mike, Robert, and this team have a proven track record of building category-defining companies.””The security industry has spent decades building better tools for practitioners and almost nothing for the leader who runs the program,” said Mike Armistead, CEO and Co-founder of Pulse Security AI. “A CFO reconciles finances through an ERP. A CRO captures tribal knowledge with a CRM. Security leaders have never had the equivalent. Pulse is the foundation they need to run their programs the way other functions leverage their management systems to gain clarity, speed, and communicate effectively.”
Resources
- Read the thesis behind Pulse Security, “Stealth Mode Is Over. Here’s Why We Built Pulse.”
- Watch: From Spreadsheets to Strategy: How Pulse Security Modernizes Security Management
- Watch: Investing in the Future of Security Leadership | Sid Trivedi & Apoorva Pandhi
About Pulse Security AI
Pulse Security is redefining how cybersecurity programs are run with an operational management platform for cybersecurity leaders. It’s where security pros and AI agents work together: executing procedures, capturing decisions, and delivering real-time program visibility without the manual overhead. The result is a security organization that runs faster, costs less, and gives leaders clear confidence in where their program stands. Pulse Security was founded by a seasoned team of former Google and security veterans and is backed by Foundation Capital and Zetta Venture Partners. Users can learn more at pulsesecurity.ai.
Contact
Carmen Angela Harris
Pulse Security
carmen@pulsesecurity.ai
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