Serval has raised $47,000,000 in Series A funding, backed by Redpoint, First Round Capital, General Catalyst, BoxGroup, Bessemer Venture Partners, Chemistry, and others. Led by founder Jake Stauch, Serval is tackling one of the biggest unsolved challenges in the AI era: how enterprises can use large language models safely without exposing their intellectual property, customer data, or internal systems. Instead of limiting AI access or forcing teams to lock down data, Serval builds the secure layer that allows companies to adopt AI confidently. The company is transforming security from a barrier into an enabler  -  allowing enterprises to use any AI model, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, and open-source models, without leaking sensitive or regulated information. Serval is not trying to be “another AI security vendor.” It is building the security foundation that makes enterprise AI adoption possible.

---

Reframing AI Security: Not “How Do We Restrict AI?” but “How Do We Enable It Safely?”

The biggest blocker to enterprise AI adoption is not technical capability  -  it’s data governance. Legal, compliance, and IT departments are terrified of accidental data exposure through prompts, training data propagation, or model memory. Enterprises can’t afford to experiment freely because the cost of a mis-prompt could be millions. Serval flips the mindset. Instead of restricting access, Serval enables context-aware security, where AI models can use internal data without ever seeing or retaining sensitive details. With Serval, employees get full AI capability without companies risking their core data assets. Before Serval, enterprises had to choose: protect data or move fast. With Serval, they no longer have to choose. Data remains protected while teams innovate at full speed.

---

Infrastructure Over Integration: Serval Becomes the Enterprise AI Control Layer

Enterprises today are stitching together dozens of AI tools, plug-ins, and copilots  -  each with separate permissions, risk profiles, and access levels. This creates a new attack surface, one that legacy security architecture was never designed to handle. Serval becomes the single security layer that governs them all. It sits between the data and the AI model, automatically filtering sensitive information and enforcing policy in real time. The system detects when a model is about to receive or output unapproved data and blocks the exchange before it happens. Instead of forcing companies to reinvent their data access rules across every AI tool, Serval centralizes control into a single orchestration engine. Serval doesn’t add more tools to the AI stack. It becomes the place where AI tools are allowed to operate.

---

Don’t Sell a Feature  -  Control the Risk Layer Everyone Depends On

There’s a reason Serval is getting attention from the most elite investors in AI. Instead of building a product that enterprises might use, Serval built the layer enterprises cannot adopt AI without. Jake Stauch understood something critical: in enterprise, buying decisions are driven by fear  -  not enthusiasm. Companies don’t buy AI tools because they want them.
They buy security because they need it.

The most scalable companies don’t build what users find helpful.
They build what organizations cannot operate without.

Serval didn’t try to ride the AI wave.
It positioned itself at the point of failure that the entire wave depends on.

---

Investor Alignment: This Round Is a Signal, Not Just Capital

Redpoint, First Round, General Catalyst, BoxGroup, Bessemer  -  these are the firms that funded Snowflake, Notion, Stripe, and Airtable. These firms do not invest in tooling. They invest in foundational architecture shifts. Their thesis is simple: AI adoption will not be gated by capability. It will be gated by fear. Serval removes that fear. This round is not just capital  -  it represents a collective understanding from the smartest investors in the industry that secure AI access will become a mandatory enterprise requirement.

---

A Market Defined by Risk: AI Adoption Is Outpacing Security Readiness

The market is surging forward faster than security teams can keep up. Enterprises know they need AI, but they also know one mistake could expose trade secrets, regulated customer information, or proprietary data. Current research shows the pressure clearly:

• 91% of enterprises are actively deploying generative AI or experimenting with pilots.
  
• Yet 61% of CIOs list data exposure as their number one fear preventing full deployment.
  
• AI-related data leaks increased over 900% in the last 12 months as employees unknowingly pasted sensitive data into public models.
  
• The enterprise AI security market is projected to exceed $14.3 billion by 2030, driven by regulatory pressure and operational risk.
  

Companies are no longer asking, “How do we use AI?”
They’re asking, “How do we use AI without losing control?”

With Serval, the answer becomes simple:
You use AI.
Serval handles the control.

---

Why Serval Wins: AI Is Useless Without Data  -  and Data Is Useless Without Trust

Employees love AI because it accelerates work. Enterprises fear AI because it exposes information. Serval resolves the tension. It enables teams to use data without exposing it to models, tiering access based on role, system, policy, and context. Serval creates a perimeter around the organization’s most sensitive digital assets and ensures that only the right information reaches the model. Competitors try to secure prompts. Serval secures the entire data exchange. Competitors try to manage workflows. Serval manages risk. Competitors facilitate AI usage.
Serval enables AI adoption at scale.

---

What’s Next for Serval

With $47M secured, Serval is accelerating enterprise deployment and building the global AI governance engine. The company will expand integrations into corporate data systems, extend policy automation across cloud environments, and build interoperability across private and public LLMs. Serval’s expansion strategy is simple: become the required trust layer for enterprise AI  -  just like Okta became identity, and Snowflake became storage. Serval is positioning itself as the security substrate of the AI economy. Enterprises won’t adopt AI and then secure it. They will secure AI and then adopt it. Serval will be the reason they can.

---

Final Thoughts

Most companies are building AI tools.
Serval is building the system that makes AI safe to use.

AI without security is just a liability.
Security without AI is just stagnation.

The future will belong to companies that can move fast  -  confidently.
Serval is building that confidence.