P0 Nets $6.5 Mn To Help Tech Firms Curb Data Breach & Software Failure

AI-based security startup P0 has secured $6.5 Mn as a part of its seed funding round from Silicon Valley-based investor Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Founded by Kunal Agarwal, and Prakash Sanker, P0 focusses on eliminating data exploits by securing APIs. The startup wants to position it as a unified platform for enterprises, encompassing cataloging, access control and threat protection across all of the APIs within their systems.

P0 works like an assistant for a developer, which utilises large language models (LLMs) to pinpoint safety and security concerns in software. Instead of just checking for issues in the code after it’s done, the platform works alongside the developer as they build the code. It carefully looks at the whole code to find any potential problems or vulnerabilities. Then, it tests the code using special inputs that it creates based on the context of the code itself.

LightSpeed, which counts unicorns like OYO, ShareChat and BYJU’S as among its portfolio companies, has been working in stealth mode alongside Sanker and Agarwal throughout the past year. Their focus has been on addressing code and API security challenges using a comprehensive LLM-first approach.

“We have known the founders for a long, long time and they are at the absolute cutting edge of using LLMs in production to solve this age-old problem,” Hemant Mohapatra, partner at Lightspeed India, said.

Agarwal is a second-time founder with Lightspeed. His previous startup, Priority Vendor, was funded by the venture capital firm in 2016 and subsequently acquired by Softbank-funded C2FO in 2019.

Sanker brings a strong educational foundation in computational sciences and mathematics from Stanford University, complemented by his work experience at Splunk and Palantir.

“P0s cutting-edge approach to code and API security is unique and amongst the first ever truly LLM-native ways of solving this age-old and ever-evolving problem. We are excited to have incubated and backed them from when this was just an idea on paper,” Mohapatra said.

The funding comes at a time when more and more Indian founders and startups are betting on AI to solve issues. Recently, Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal’s third startup Krutrim became India’s first AI unicorn with a $50 Mn funding round led by a clutch of investors including Matrix Partners India.

Last month, gen AI startup Bengaluru-based Sarvam AI raised Series A funding of $41 Mn (around INR 342 Cr) led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.