Peak XV Partners bets on another AI startup to expand US portfolio

Venture capital firm Peak XV Partners, which primarily invests in India and Southeast Asia, has expanded its US portfolio with participation in a Series B funding round in AI-native cybersecurity startup Exaforce.

The California-headquartered startup said it raised $125 million in its Series B round, which also saw participation from private equity fund-of-funds HarbourVest, PE firm Mayfield, venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, Seligman Investments’ venture platform Seligman Ventures, and AI and deep-tech venture capital firm AICONIC Ventures.

Meanwhile, Peak XV has been increasing its focus on US investments, particularly in AI startups, after splitting from Sequoia Capital three years ago. Earlier this month, the venture capital firm appointed former Fractal executive Shelly Singh as an operating partner in San Francisco to strengthen its US presence and AI investment strategy.

Peak XV counts about a dozen US-linked investments in its portfolio, with many of them involved in AI technologies. These include fintech platform Alex, AI geo-analytics platform The Prompting Company, AI sales upskilling platform Hyperbound, AI healthcare revenue platform Claim Health, and Marqvision, which uses AI to fight digital piracy. The portfolio also includes Bluejay, Dashverse, Luminai, Mem0, Posthog, and TestMu AI, according to the VC firm’s website.

Exaforce’s latest round comes nearly a year after it raised $75 million in its Series A financing and takes the company’s total funding to $200 million. The company said the fresh capital will be used to scale its AI-native security operations platform, strengthen its real-time reasoning capabilities and expand globally.

Founded by Indian-origin entrepreneur Ankur Singla, Exaforce develops AI-powered security operations tools designed to help enterprises detect, investigate and respond to cyber threats in real time. The company says its platform uses a real-time security knowledge graph that connects identities, permissions, configurations, files and cloud activity to improve threat detection and reduce investigation time.

The company claims its platform can reduce investigation time by 10x compared with traditional AI-enabled security tools by correlating data at the ingestion stage instead of during investigations.