Greylock Partners

Today's newsletter features our latest profile of Hasan Imam and Obsidian Security. We take a look at Hasan's journey from Bangladesh to Silicon Valley, where he had a series of “mini careers” that tested his resilience and broadened his skillset - ultimately landing him at Obsidian in 2021. Today, Obsidian is helping Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 companies protect their most critical SaaS applications, and beats some of the biggest and most established security platforms more than 80% of the time in customer bake-offs. And now, with AI agents set to autonomously access these platforms, Hasan sees Obsidian's opportunity expanding dramatically. Read more 👇

"I didn't know what came next, but I knew I couldn't fail." Hasan Imam drew on that resolve when he stepped in as the CEO of Obsidian Security in 2021. Fast forward to today, and Obsidian is the fast growing leader in SaaS and agentic security, for Global 2000 companies. “We’ve always seen SaaS as the foundation of modern business,” Hasan says. “With AI agents, the stakes go up dramatically. The systems that run enterprises will be run by software, and securing those interactions will define the next era of cybersecurity.” Read more at the post in the comments field below. cc: Glenn Chisholm, Xinran Wang, Khanh Tran, Matt W., Brian Murphy, Chithra Rajagopalan, Paul Luongo, Alfredo Hickman, Tina Lei, Corey Elinburg, Ish Cheema, Priya Balakrishnan, Greylock Partners, Wing Venture Capital, Menlo Ventures, Norwest, IVP, GV (Google Ventures), Sunil Seshadri, Gaurav Garg, Venky Ganesan, Promod Haque, Somesh Dash, Karim Faris, Sangeen Zeb

When Hasan Imam stepped into the role of Obsidian Security's CEO in 2021, he saw an overlooked opportunity: the chance to build a disruptive approach to SaaS security at a time when no other vendor was addressing the problem head-on. Yet he never pictured himself leading a cybersecurity company in Silicon Valley. “I’ve never had a grand plan for my life,” he says. “It was always about doing my very best in whatever situation I was in.” This mindset took him from Bangladesh to Silicon Valley, where he had a series of “mini careers” across engineering, entrepreneurship, and sales that tested his resilience and broadened his skillset - ultimately landing him at Obsidian. Four years later, Obsidian is helping Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 companies protect their most critical SaaS applications, and beats some of the biggest and most established security platforms more than 80% of the time in customer bake-offs. Yet what excites Hasan the most? "What’s still in front of us," he says. SaaS security has become a critical part of the AI agent revolution. While there will be a ton of value created by agents, they also open up new attack surfaces at a scale never seen before. Protecting SaaS activity becomes non-negotiable. "This is the kind of opportunity you build a generational company around," Hasan notes, "and that’s the journey we’re on." Read our latest profile. Link in the comments.

What do Baseten, Cogent Security, and Ramp have in common? 1/ Engineers love working there 2/ They are all Greylock Partners portfolio companies 3/ and.....they're all actively hiring FDEs You can come learn more about how these iconic companies think about FDE roles at our event on October 14th. DM for invite. cc Vineet Edupuganti Geng Sng Thanos Baskous Tuhin Srivastava Amir Haghighat Joey Zwicker Leo Mehr Paola Noun

Today's newsletter highlights a live speaker series – Greylock Change Agents – which is hosted by our partner Corinne Marie Riley and explores this new era of agentic AI with the founders, researchers, and builders who have a front-row seat. The latest conversation dives into the world of agentic security. Corinne sat down with Evan Reiser CEO and co-founder of Abnormal AI, and Vineet Edupuganti, CEO and co-founder of Cogent Security, to discuss how AI agents are being deployed to detect anomalies, manage vulnerabilities, and remediate risks autonomously. Plus portfolio news and more 👇

We raised $250M to accelerate our work in building AI’s unified compute layer 🚀! Thank you to our entire team for working so hard and bringing so much value into the world. In the past year, we’ve released AI inference at scale that’s now powering trillions of tokens, made AI workloads 4x faster and 2.5x cheaper for our customers, and welcomed 10K’s of new developers. The round was led by Thomas Tull’s US Innovative Technology, with DFJ Growth joining and with participation from all existing investors including GV (Google Ventures), General Catalyst and Greylock Partners. This brings our total capital raised to $380M across three rounds since our founding in 2022. Read more in the comments ⬇️

Huge congratulations to Hasan Imam and the entire Obsidian Security team on today’s agentic security launch. Obsidian has long set the bar for SaaS security, and now they are addressing the fast-growing risks and security challenges around AI agents in SaaS. Proud of the vision, the leadership and the execution that made this possible. Read more at: https://lnkd.in/gFZuV5sx cc: Greylock Partners 

AI agents are being rolled out quickly across organizations, often without much thought to security. That's why we - at Greylock Partners - are excited to see Obsidian Security debut SaaS AI agent defense, giving enterprises the first purpose-built solution to govern how AI agents access data in SaaS environments. Congratulations to Hasan Imam and the entire Obsidian Security team on the launch! 👉 Read more: https://lnkd.in/gdx63Z9E cc Asheem Chandna