Pulse Security AI emerged from stealth today, backed by $8 million in seed funding led by Foundation Capital with participation from Zetta Venture Partners. The company aims to solve a long-standing gap in cybersecurity: providing security leaders with the same operational foundation that other business functions take for granted.
For decades, security teams have invested in purpose-built tools for practitioners—SOC analysts, threat hunters, vulnerability managers—yet the program itself has been managed through spreadsheets, slide decks, and tribal knowledge. The pressure is mounting as CVE submissions rose 263% from 2020 to 2025, and SEC disclosure rules now place cyber risk squarely in the boardroom.
Pulse Security’s platform is built on a context graph architecture that sits above existing technical silos—EDR, cloud, identity, and unstructured data sources like assessment reports and tracking spreadsheets. By integrating risks, technical environments, regulatory obligations, people, and business priorities, the platform gives CISOs a consolidated system of record to formulate strategy, automate workflows, and communicate with authority.
“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.”
The company was co-founded by product and security experts Mike Armistead, Robert Hipps, and Nick Gilligan. Armistead and Hipps previously co-founded Respond Software, acquired by FireEye/Mandiant for $186 million, and Armistead also co-founded Fortify Software, acquired by HP. 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.”
Apoorva Pandhi, Managing Director at Zetta Venture Partners, added: “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.”
The funding will accelerate Pulse’s engineering and go-to-market efforts to meet enterprise demand from security leaders ready to modernize how their programs are run.