AI security startup Glow raises $180M from ex-Meta founder
▼ Summary
– Roi Tiger, co-creator of the surveillance tool Onavo that Meta used to spy on rivals, now leads Glow, a security startup focused on prevention.
– Glow launched with $180 million in funding at a $1.2 billion valuation, backed by Sequoia, Cyberstarts, and others, and employs nearly 100 people.
– Glow uses AI agents to map device activity, assess risk, and block unapproved software before installation, aiming to prevent threats rather than detect them after the fact.
– Tiger’s past with Onavo complicates Glow’s credibility, as Onavo was used by Meta to intercept rivals’ encrypted traffic, a practice described as criminal in court documents.
– Glow, with no disclosed revenue or named customers, joins a trend of AI-security startups reaching billion-dollar valuations before proving a business model.
The founder now asking enterprises to trust AI with their laptops once built one of Silicon Valley’s most infamous surveillance systems. Roi Tiger co-created Onavo, the app Meta turned into a spying tool against its rivals. His latest venture, Glow, aims for something nearly opposite.
Glow has emerged from stealth mode with $180 million in funding at a $1.2 billion valuation. Sequoia, Cyberstarts, Greenoaks, and Redpoint Ventures led the round, with Index Ventures, Lux Capital, and others participating. Founded in 2025 and operating between Tel Aviv and Palo Alto, the startup already employs close to 100 people.
Prevention over detection defines its approach. Most security tools today detect threats and respond after the fact. Glow wants to stop them before they happen, using AI agents that map everything running on a device, assess the risk, and block unapproved software before it installs.
“Prevention was always the right answer in security. It just never worked at enterprise scale without blocking the business,” Tiger said. “AI solves that.” His argument hinges on a shift AI has forced. According to Glow’s own data, regular AI use on corporate devices has surged from 15% to 45% in a year, much of it unauthorized.
That expansion widens the attack surface just as adversaries gain frontier models of their own. Glow argues teams should assume attackers wield Mythos-class AI, capable of exploiting any overlooked gap at machine speed. Its agents run on Anthropic and Google Gemini models, via Amazon Bedrock, layered with Glow’s own reasoning engine. The company says the system has already prevented malicious code packages from installing on customer devices.
The founder’s past complicates the pitch. Tiger co-founded Onavo, a data-analytics app Meta acquired in 2013, and stayed nine years, rising to VP of engineering. As Tech Funding News reported, Onavo became the basis of “Project Ghostbusters.”
Court documents unsealed in 2024 revealed Meta repurposed Onavo’s VPN to intercept and decrypt rivals’ encrypted traffic, targeting Snapchat, YouTube, and Amazon. Apple removed the app in 2018, and Meta shut it down in 2019. The filings described the conduct as criminal. Tiger has not publicly discussed his role, and Glow’s launch does not mention it.
The irony is unavoidable. Onavo watched and reported in secret. Glow promises to control what runs on a device and keep risk visible.
A billion-dollar valuation before revenue raises eyebrows. Glow has not disclosed any revenue and names no customers beyond broad sectors like healthcare, retail, and financial services. It joins a wave of AI-security startups that crossed the billion-dollar mark before proving a business model, a pattern familiar from the Israeli cyber scene that produced Wiz. Several of Glow’s backers also funded Wiz.
Its competitors are entrenched. CrowdStrike, Microsoft, and SentinelOne dominate the endpoint market, and they built their empires on detection. The open question is whether enterprises will trust an AI agent to block software autonomously, with no human in the loop. For a founder whose last act eroded exactly that kind of trust, it is a fitting test.
(Source: The Next Web)
