Native’s $31 million Series A, led by Ballistic Ventures and bolstered by follow‑on commitments from General Catalyst, YL Ventures and Merlin Ventures, brings the startup’s total capital to $42 million and signals a renewed appetite among growth‑stage investors for cloud‑native security platforms that deliver policy‑driven enforcement across heterogeneous environments. The round’s composition—combining specialist cyber‑VCs with seasoned operators such as former Google Cloud CISO Phil Venables, now a Ballistic partner—highlights a strategic shift toward backing companies that can translate enterprise intent into operative controls without adding operational overhead.
Founded in 2024 by alumni of AWS GuardDuty, AWS Security and Check Point, Native’s platform functions as a central policy‑to‑configuration engine that leverages each cloud provider’s native enforcement mechanisms rather than overlaying additional monitoring layers. By simulating policy changes, enabling phased rollouts and automating vendor‑specific translation, the solution reduces the implementation friction that typically causes enterprises to underutilize built‑in security capabilities in multi‑cloud estates. Early traction with Fortune 100 firms in finance, technology and media underscores the product’s relevance to sectors where regulatory compliance, data sovereignty and uninterrupted service delivery are non‑negotiable.
For the MENA region, where sovereign wealth funds and national technology strategies are aggressively expanding public‑cloud adoption and investing in domestic cyber‑resilience, Native’s model offers a clear avenue to close the policy‑execution gap that currently limits the effectiveness of regional cloud investments. Sovereign capital earmarked for digital infrastructure can allocate growth‑stage stakes to platforms like Native that promise scalable, vendor‑agnostic security controls, thereby reducing the risk posture of large‑scale AI and smart‑city initiatives. Simultaneously, the regional venture ecosystem—already witnessing a surge in early‑stage cyber‑security funds—can view Native as a benchmark for later‑stage mezzanine opportunities, encouraging co‑investment patterns that align financial returns with the strategic imperative of securing the MENA’s accelerating cloud‑first trajectory.
