Securing identities in the domain of cybersecurity extends beyond users to applications and machines—a dimension Clutch Security is intensely focusing on. The startup’s recent announcement of a $20 million fund underscores the industry-wide demand for this kind of security solution.
This funding round is led by SignalFire, with added participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Merlin Ventures, who was also involved in Clutch’s prior seed round worth $8.5 million.
Clutch Security is utilizing its funding to enhance product development, R&D, and broaden its business operations. Currently, the company integrates with nearly 60 platforms used widely across enterprises, covering diverse data used for interconnections such as API keys, service accounts, tokens, and other credentials.
The startup’s platform offers features like network visibility, risk management, lifecycle management, utilizing a zero-trust approach. Data reveals that the average number of machine identities in a large-scale enterprise has risen impressively from 320,000 in 2022 to 1 million in 2024.
Founded in 2023, Clutch’s emphasis on perimeter breaches occurred alongside a period of increased security breaches worldwide. CEO Ofir Har-Chen, who co-founded the company with Sagi Haas and Tal Kimhi, suggests that working in this milieu was challenging but also helped foster a focused approach.
Cloud computing and the upsurge of software as a service significantly heightened the machine identity issue Clutch aims to address. The burgeoning AI sphere, inhabited by AI agents, presents a new terrain for hackers, subtly shifting the threat from human to machine identities.
The non-human identity security space is quite crowded currently, with players like Semperis, Astrix Security, Oasis, CyberArk, Silverfort, and Token Security. Still, Clutch’s rapid pace of development marks it as a venture of specific interest to its investors.
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