Tines Raises $125M to Expand Security Automation, Agentic AI

A workflow platform led by a DocuSign, eBay and Deloitte veteran raised $125 million to automate mission-critical enterprise functions through agentic AI.

See Also: From Silos to Synergy: Gen AI Aligns IT and Security Teams

Dublin, Ireland-based Tines plans to advance AI-powered automation and broaden its market reach by expanding beyond security into IT, infrastructure and operations, according to co-founder and CEO Eoin Hinchy. Tines notched a $1.125 billion valuation in conjunction with the Series C funding, which Hinchey said adds credibility when pitching Fortune 100 enterprises and reflects the value the company delivers.

“There’s a huge opportunity in front of us,” Hinchey told Information Security Media Group. “The company is now about seven years old. It’s never felt like a better time to seize the opportunity ahead. We’ve just come off probably the best year of growth we’ve ever had, both in terms of customer numbers, in terms of revenue, but also in terms of just how much our customers are using the product.”

What Goldman Sachs Brings to the Table as Lead Investor

Tines, founded in 2018, employs 364 people and has been led since its inception by Hinchy, who spent a combined decade at DocuSign, eBay and Deloitte. The latest funding comes just 10 months after the company closed a second $50 million Series B extension led by Felicis and Accel and 28 months after the company closed a $55 million Series B extension led by Felicis. All told, Tines has raised $272 million (see: Tines Raises $50M to Boost Enterprise-Focused AI Technology).

The company’s customer adoption, revenue and product have surged over the past year to more than a billion automated actions per week, which Hinchey said made now the right time for the company to scale operations and innovations. Additional funding at a favorable valuation helps Tines strengthen its balance sheet, accelerate product development, hire top talent and expand globally, Hinchey said.

“We’re now doing a billion automated actions every single week on behalf of our customers,” Hinchy said. “So, there’s just this huge opportunity ahead of us, and now feels like an amazing time to foster the balance sheet and go after it.”

Tines’ Series C funding was led by growth equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, which he said brings unique advantages compared to traditional Silicon Valley venture capital firms. Goldman Sachs’ size, maturity and extensive network gives Tines access to key decision-makers in enterprise IT and cybersecurity, and he said the partnership will help Tines expand into larger, more strategic markets.

“What Goldman brings is something a little bit different, both in terms of their size, their maturity, their experience and, frankly, the network that they have amongst the world’s leading companies and CIOs,” Hinchy said. “So I think we’re really excited to tap into that network, to tap into the experience that they have of helping software companies go to that next phase of growth.”

Getting Agentic AI Ready for Mission-Critical Workloads

CISOs are worried about how employees use AI, and Tines provides a secure alternative by allowing enterprises to leverage AI privately and securely within their own environment, Hinchy said. Specifically, Hinchey said Tines ensures AI usage doesn’t involve data leakage, unauthorized access or compliance risks by not fine-tuning on sensitive data and not sending data outside enterprise-controlled settings.

“The one thing that CISOs consistently tell us they’re very concerned about is how they can enable their company to leverage AI in a secure, private way,” he said. “They’re seeing their users upload information to ChatGPT. They’re worried about that risk. With Tines, we’ve solved that problem by giving customers access to these large language models and allowing them to enable it in a secure and private way.”

AI today is largely human-guided, but Hinchy said Tines aims to develop AI that can take autonomous actions with minimal human intervention. The biggest challenge in agentic AI adoption is building trust, with executives needing to understand how AI makes decisions to ensure it follows deterministic rules. He said Tines is working on agentic AI that can make decisions in mission-critical workflows such as cybersecurity.

“If you’re a CISO or technology executive, to trust these agentic systems you really need to understand the decisions that they’re making, why they’re making those decisions, and be able to predict the deterministic path they will take given certain effects,” Hinchy said.

While Tines started as a security-focused automation platform, Hinchy said 30% of its customers now use it for broader IT, infrastructure and operations workflows, with the goal of expanding further into non-security use cases over the next 12 to 18 months. The core product does not need significant changes, he said. The main shift will be in marketing, sales strategy and packaging the solution differently for IT leaders.

“Although Tines will continue to stay very focused on making security teams’ lives easier and more effective and efficient, we also want to start being more deliberate about how we go to market to other mission-critical teams, including IT and infrastructure and ops and so on,” Hinchy said. “So, we’ll be measuring our penetration into those adjacent teams.”