Vanta has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AI security startup Pillar Security in a deal valued at about $150 million in cash and shares, Calcalist reported. Pillar’s founders, Dor Sarig and Ziv Karliner, are expected to stay on and lead Vanta’s AI security work. The company’s more than 20 employees are expected to join Vanta, with Pillar becoming its Israeli research and development center, according to Calcalist.
Integration is planned through 2027
Vanta’s announced schedule calls for AI inventory and runtime monitoring and detection to begin in January 2027, red teaming in spring, and runtime enforcement by summer. The company also said AI Governance by Vanta is due to become a paid offering in January 2027. The plan and product timing appear in Vanta’s acquisition announcement.
Pillar’s platform is designed to discover and test AI applications and agents, protect them as they operate, and block unauthorized actions, according to Pillar’s announcement. Vanta says it serves more than 20,000 organizations and is combining Pillar’s runtime security capabilities with its own governance platform, as described in the company’s announcement.
Pillar’s research and security framework
Pillar says its researchers found vulnerabilities in the n8n automation platform that could expose hundreds of thousands of enterprise AI systems to takeover, as well as a flaw in Google’s Gemini CLI that could allow a GitHub issue to compromise its supply chain. Those findings are described in Pillar’s account of the deal.
The company also developed SAIL, a framework that Pillar says has passed 50,000 downloads and organizes 91 AI risks across seven stages of the AI lifecycle. Pillar’s announcement describes the framework; Vanta says SAIL aligns with ISO and NIST standards and OWASP guidance.
Acquisition activity across cybersecurity
The Pillar deal comes amid other acquisitions in AI security. CrowdStrike agreed to buy Fiddler AI and Dreadnode; The Wall Street Journal valued the deals at about $400 million and $95 million, respectively, as TechCrunch reported. Separately, SecurityWeek counted 37 cybersecurity acquisitions announced in October 2026, including Anthropic’s acquisition of Opaque Systems, Cohere’s letter of intent to acquire AISLE, and Hex-Rays’ reported $30 million-to-$35 million deal for HexAI, according to SecurityWeek.
Vanta cited research indicating that 65% of IT and business leaders say their use of agentic AI is outpacing their understanding of it, according to Yahoo Finance’s report on the announcement.
Miami had been a possible location for Pillar, not the announced destination for its team. Refresh Miami reported that Sarig, who had moved from Israel to South Florida with his family, was considering a lasting company presence there earlier in 2026. Pillar had raised $9 million in seed funding.
