Alice wins $140M to close AI security gap

The race to secure AI systems against adversarial attacks is heating up as Alice, an AI trust and safety company, announced on Tuesday a $140 million funding round to bolster its platform. The investment, led by Apax Digital Funds, brings Alice's total funding to $280 million, which will be used to advance its AI platform, expand its team behind a proprietary intelligence dataset, and scale go-to-market efforts.

Funding Details and Backers

The round saw participation from MoreTech, Phoenix Financial, Resolute Ventures, Grove Ventures, CRV, Highland Europe, Vintage Investments, Norwest, NFX, and Claltech. This diverse group of investors underscores confidence in Alice's approach to AI security, which combines pre-release stress testing with continuous runtime protection.

Stress-Testing and Red-Teaming

Alice partners with AI developers to stress-test foundational models before they go public. Its research division executes mock malicious inputs and complex agentic tasks to expose erratic behaviors, ultimately hardening models against prompt injection and jailbreak attempts. This proactive approach aims to identify vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them.

From Pre-Release to Production

Once models enter production, Alice offers continuous red-teaming and dynamic runtime guardrails to align operations with specific business rules. Organizations can configure custom internal guidelines, simulate breaches, and monitor system traffic in real time. This ensures that AI systems remain secure even as they are deployed in dynamic enterprise environments.

The Rabbit Hole Database

Central to Alice's offering is its proprietary database named Rabbit Hole. Constructed over nearly a decade, this repository tracks digital fraud, ideological extremism, and manipulation campaigns. By leveraging this vast archive of harmful content, the platform can detect and intercept hostile actions against generative AI systems.

“There are infinite ways to break an AI, and you can’t defend against something you’ve never seen,”

said Noam Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of Alice. He added, “We spent nearly a decade learning exactly how people abuse technology at the scale of billions, first on the world’s largest platforms and now on the models those same people are probing. We are very quickly democratizing capabilities before we’ve democratized the defenses. This round is about closing that gap.”

Research Facility and Team

Alice maintains a dedicated research facility to study the vulnerabilities of machine learning architectures. The lab employs more than 150 specialists who collaborate with major model developers to anticipate failures, analyze potential manipulation vectors, and proactively close security gaps. This team is pivotal in staying ahead of emerging threats.

From ActiveFence to Alice

Previously operating under the name ActiveFence, Alice has headquarters in New York and Tel Aviv. The rebranding reflects a broader focus on AI security, building on its legacy of content moderation and threat intelligence.

Why It Matters

The substantial investment in Alice signals a growing recognition that AI systems are increasingly targets for malicious actors. As AI adoption accelerates, the need for robust defense mechanisms becomes critical. This funding could enable Alice to expand its capabilities, potentially setting a higher bar for AI security across industries. For businesses deploying AI, it underscores the importance of integrating security measures throughout the AI lifecycle to protect against evolving threats.