Israeli cybersecurity company imper.ai emerged from stealth Thursday, announcing its public launch and a $28 million funding round led by Redpoint Ventures and Battery Ventures. The startup, founded by elite cyber-intelligence veterans, has developed a platform to prevent impersonation attacks — including deepfakes and voice clones — in real time across communication platforms such as Zoom, Teams, and Slack.
The company’s backers also include Maple VC, Vesey VC, and Cerca Partners. The fresh capital will support imper.ai’s expansion and further development of its platform, which is already being deployed across financial, health care and technology enterprises.
imper.ai’s technology takes a unique approach to impersonation prevention by analyzing hard-to-fake signals like device telemetry, network diagnostics and behavioral patterns rather than scanning message content for anomalies. Its agentless, privacy-first solution runs silently across major communication and IT systems, offering real-time verification without disrupting workflows.
“AI-driven impersonation has become one of the biggest drivers of financial loss and reputational risk for enterprises,” said CEO and co-founder Noam Awadish. “We built imper.ai to help CISOs shift from crisis response to proactive prevention.”
Awadish co-founded the company with CPO Anatoly Blighovsky, former CISO and cyber division head in Israel’s elite Unit 8200, and CTO Rom Dudkiewicz, also a Unit 8200 alum and vulnerability researcher.
The company’s launch comes amid growing concern about impersonation attacks in the enterprise world. A recent ransomware attack on British retailer Marks & Spencer, believed to have originated from social engineering tactics, is expected to cost the company $380 million. Business email compromise scams alone cost companies $2.8 billion last year, according to the FBI.
Investors view imper.ai as a foundational addition to the evolving enterprise security stack. “What stood out about imper.ai is how naturally it solves the trust problem,” said Erica Brescia, managing director at Redpoint Ventures. “It gives companies confidence that every call, message and interaction is authentic.”
Barak Schoster, partner at Battery Ventures and board member at imper.ai, added: “Impersonation isn’t just a feature of modern attacks — it’s becoming the primary threat vector. imper.ai’s real-time verification approach is critical infrastructure for the GenAI era.”