Balistic Ventures seeks $490 million: a capital race to protect software infrastructure from machine attacks

Balistic Ventures, a venture capital firm specializing in cybersecurity, filed its official disclosures with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, seeking to raise $490 million through two new investment funds. The company, based in San Francisco, plans to allocate $360 million to its third flagship fund, matching the size of its second fund that will be closed in 2024, and to direct $130 million to a parallel investment vehicle called the Balistic Ventures B Fund, roughly the same amount it targeted in its previous vehicle, Fund A, according to PitchBook data. The disclosures did not record any actual sales to date and management declined to comment.

These moves come at a time when the rise of AI agents is imposing accelerating security challenges, as automated systems have become capable of launching sophisticated attacks that increase the fragility of traditional software. Data from a recent report by J.P. Morgan Chase, based on PitchBook figures, show that U.S. cybersecurity startups raised $11.5 billion in 2025, the highest level since 2022.AI-enabled companies have captured about 72 percent of all venture capital deals in the cybersecurity sector up to May of this year, compared with roughly 36 percent in 2019.

The annual Digital Defense report released by Microsoft last month documents the widening of this threat, confirming that hackers are employing AI tools to expand the scope of phishing campaigns, social engineering, and the generation of code and malware at unprecedented speeds, even though the core attack techniques and technologies remain largely unchanged. Balistic Ventures, founded in late 2021 by Ted Schlein, former partner at Kleiner Perkins, together with BarmaK, former head of cybersecurity at AT&T, and Roger Thornton, co-founder of Fortify Software and Elean Volt, follows an investment strategy that mirrors competitors such as Forgepoint Capital and Ten Eleven Ventures. The firm has backed startups that achieved notable exits, including Talon Cyber Security, which was acquired by Palo Alto Networks, and Bangia, bought by CrowdStrike, as well as stakes in companies such as Armadin, Nadj Security, Oligo Security and Get Real.

The actual impact of this investment flow directly affects decision-makers and chief information security officers in the Gulf, Egypt and the Levant; the ongoing shift in attack mechanisms demands a fundamental change in protection priorities.With capital concentrating on AI-integrated firms, financial institutions, government bodies and telecom operators in the region find themselves needing to replace static defense models. Traditional vulnerability testing has become too slow against relentless automated attacks, shifting budget allocations toward platforms that can monitor the behavior of intelligent agents and detect intrusions in real time.

If you lead infrastructure or a digital security team in a regional organization, the current operational challenge goes beyond merely adding new software to your stack. The real danger stems from attackers’ ability to automatically multiply the efficiency of traditional methods to strike hundreds of targets in fractions of a second. This reality calls for updating procurement agreements with technology suppliers and imposing requirements that ensure monitoring of data flows and inference models, so that internal AI tools do not become invisible pathways for breaching sensitive networks.