In an era where enterprises drown in data but lack true visibility into their most sensitive assets, Matters.AI has emerged with an ambitious mission—to rethink cybersecurity from the ground up. The Bengaluru-based startup has raised ₹55 crore to introduce an entirely new class of system it calls the AI Security Engineer—a self-learning, autonomous system designed to see, understand, and protect data everywhere it lives.
The ₹42 crore Seed round was co-led by Kalaari Capital and Endiya Partners, with participation from Better Capital, Carya Venture Partners, and a group of prominent cybersecurity angels. The company had earlier raised ₹13 crore in a pre-seed round led by Better Capital and Carya Venture Partners.
Credits: The Economic Times
The funding will power Matters.AI’s research into predictive detection, expand its go-to-market presence in India and the US, and scale engineering and customer success teams—especially for clients operating under India’s new Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act.
The Question That Sparked a Movement
The idea for Matters.AI was born from a simple yet alarming observation. “Every CISO we met said the same thing: ‘I can’t even tell you where my sensitive data is right now.’” said the founders. This insight revealed a massive blind spot in modern enterprise security.
According to industry estimates, over 90% of sensitive data remains invisible to security teams. Legacy Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) tools flood analysts with meaningless alerts, while genuine threats slip through undetected. When incidents occur, investigations are slow and reactive—most of the time is spent manually pulling logs and reconstructing events.
“Security teams are exhausted,” says the company. “They’re chasing noise, not threats. We built Matters.AI to end that fatigue—to turn chaos into clarity.”
The Birth of the ‘AI Security Engineer’
Unlike traditional platforms that only monitor or alert, Matters.AI’s system thinks like a human engineer. Using semantic graphs and predictive AI models, it learns how sensitive data behaves, predicts misuse before it happens, and takes autonomous action across Cloud, SaaS, Endpoints, and On-Prem environments.
This approach represents a leap beyond rule-based systems. Matters.AI’s architecture combines contextual reasoning with intent recognition, enabling it to distinguish between legitimate and risky behavior in real time.
Key capabilities include:
- Real-time endpoint visibility and control through continuous data tracing.
- Data lineage and fingerprinting, tracking how and why data moves.
- Hybrid deployment support for on-prem and SaaS environments.
- GenAI governance across tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.
- Native integrations with enterprise systems such as Zoho, Salesforce, AWS, Azure, GCP, Snowflake, and Databricks.
Building for a New Regulatory Reality
With India’s DPDP Act enforcing stricter accountability for data protection, enterprises need real-time, autonomous systems that ensure compliance across complex ecosystems. Matters.AI aims to be that control layer—built in Bharat, trusted globally.
“India has built rockets, payments, and software for the world. Now we’re building to protect it,” said Keshava Murthy, CEO and Co-founder of Matters.AI. “The world doesn’t need another dashboard screaming alerts; it needs a system that can think.”
Harsh Sahu, CTO and Co-founder, added, “Our system reasons like a human engineer—learning from how people and data interact, predicting misuse, and responding autonomously.”
Backers Bet on the Future of Intelligent Security
Investors are equally bullish on Matters.AI’s potential to lead this new frontier. Sateesh Andra, Managing Director at Endiya Partners, said, “Security teams tell us their biggest gap is between visibility and enforcement. Matters unifies discovery, lineage, and intent-aware controls into one policy plane—bridging that gap.”
Sampath, Partner at Kalaari Capital, echoed this sentiment: “As privacy regulations tighten and AI adoption accelerates, enterprises urgently need intelligent, adaptive data protection. Matters.AI is building the control layer for that new reality.”
Credits: StartupTalky
The Road Ahead
Matters.AI’s vision extends beyond data protection—it’s about creating autonomous security intelligence that evolves with every interaction. As enterprises worldwide grapple with the risks of AI and data sprawl, the company’s timing couldn’t be better.
With fresh capital, a strong founding team, and deep investor confidence, Matters.AI is positioning itself as the security brain for the AI era—one that doesn’t just monitor threats, but thinks ahead of them.
