Partnering with Ent to protect work as it happens

We're excited to announce Craft's investment in Ent's $100M round led by Decibel, with participation from Sequoia, Crosspoint Capital Partners, Shield Capital, Felicis, and In-Q-Tel (IQT). This partnership is especially meaningful to us because our relationship with Elias (Lou) Manousos goes back a decade. Lou is the kind of founder you back in a heartbeat: an exceptional technologist, product thinker, and operator who has already built and scaled a category-defining cybersecurity company.

We first got to know Lou when he and Brandon Dixon were building RiskIQ, the threat intelligence and attack surface management company. After RiskIQ was acquired by Microsoft, Lou and Brandon helped lead the development of Security Copilot before and after the large language model wave. That vantage point gave them a very unique view into how hardware, foundation models, and operating systems were maturing and creating the necessary conditions to run language models directly on the endpoint. That insight became the genesis of Ent.

When Lou and Brandon shared their vision with us, the massive opportunity ahead was clear. On-device language models could unlock security applications that were not possible before. The last generation of endpoint security companies created hundreds of billions of dollars of value. Ent is bringing that same kind of opportunity to the AI era, with new capabilities on the device powered by the latest AI models. We jumped at the opportunity to partner and believe a generational cybersecurity company will be built where work actually happens. 

This technology is arriving at a moment when organizations urgently need it. Frontier AI is changing how people work, expanding the enterprise attack surface, and accelerating how quickly attackers can move. Enterprises are embracing a world where humans and AI work together to improve productivity. Security teams do not want to slow that progress down. At the same time, threats that once unfolded over days can now happen in seconds. In this world of AI-driven workforces and AI-powered adversaries, reactive security tools are no longer enough. Enterprises need the ability to prevent risk in real time, not react after an alert.

Ent helps organizations do this with an intent-aware workspace security platform that operates directly on the device. The platform acts like an always-on security companion. It protects users and AI agents as work is happening. By bringing specialized AI reasoning to the endpoint, Ent helps customers move from reactive detection to real-time prevention.

Because inference runs locally, Ent can act with effectively zero latency while keeping sensitive data on the endpoint. That architecture also solves a problem every security team raises early: data sovereignty. Ent deploys inside the customer's own environment and processes data where it is created, so telemetry never has to leave their boundary, and customers stay in control of what is retained.

Building Ent required solving a serious technical challenge. The team needed to build a lightweight agent capable of running AI models without taxing a device’s CPU or memory. They needed the AI to build a “work model” by observing how a company’s human and AI workers operate. That model helps Ent understand the intent behind actions and distinguish normal work from risky behavior. They also needed a great user experience because Ent interacts with workers in real time through natural language nudges and action blocks.

To make this possible, Lou and Brandon assembled a world-class team made up almost entirely of principal-level engineers and threat researchers from leading cybersecurity companies and U.S. intelligence agencies. That depth of technical talent shows up in the product. Ent’s lightweight agent supports use cases like insider risk detection, data loss prevention, and AI governance. The platform is already trusted by Global 2000 customers across hospitality, financial services, and defense, with more capabilities launching soon.

We could not be more excited to deepen our partnership with Lou, Brandon, and the Ent team as they come out of stealth. Ent is bringing the latest defensive AI models to the endpoint and helping organizations move toward real-time prevention. We look forward to supporting the team on their journey to protect work as it happens.