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The Venture Codex

Merlin Ventures

8330 Boone Blvd Fl 8, Vienna, VA, 22182, United States

Overview

Merlin Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in cybersecurity companies. The firm provides infrastructure for market readiness, cybersecurity engineering expertise, and go-to-market muscle for all of its partners. Merlin Ventures is based in Tysons, Virginia.

Total investments
21
Lead investments
8
Investments · 12mo
8
Active investors
3

Sector focus

  • Business Development
  • Cyber Security
  • Financial Services
  • Venture Capital
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Investment portfolio

  • Neo

    Participated · Series A · Jul 2026

    Neo positions itself as an "Agentic Software Control" platform offering enterprise SecOps teams real-time inventory, capability and risk intelligence, behavioral attribution, and granular policy controls across AI agents, AI applications, browsers, identities, and traditional software. The platform includes native blocking of high-risk actions and malicious models. Neo was founded by former SentinelOne executives. The company plans to use the $100 million in newly raised funding to accelerate product R&D and expand into additional markets. The article cites a Gartner projection that agentic capabilities in enterprise applications could grow substantially between 2025 and 2026, highlighting demand drivers for Neo's offering. No revenue, user metrics, or valuation information was disclosed in the report.

  • QIZ Security

    Led · Seed · Jul 2026

    QIZ Security provides continuous cryptographic posture and PQC management across complex enterprise environments, offering discovery, inventory, risk modeling, remediation, and governance capabilities to enable crypto-agility. The platform is designed as an end-to-end operating layer for enterprise cryptography across hybrid and complex infrastructures. QIZ says it has supported more than 100 organizations and that its team brings more than six years of hands-on PQC experience. The company reports early traction in financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, and critical infrastructure and is building strategic partnerships with firms including Cisco, AWS, Google, CrowdStrike, Deloitte, EY, and IBM. Founded by Ben Volkow, Lenny Ridel, and Dr. Itan Barmes, QIZ is scaling product and go-to-market efforts to meet accelerating demand as enterprises prepare for the post-quantum transition.

  • Above Security

    Led · Series A · Mar 2026

    Above Security positions itself as a next-generation insider threat platform designed for an era where humans and AI agents can both act as insiders. Its platform uses a network of specialized AI investigators and an Arbiter engine that focuses on intent determination by correlating behavioral signals rather than relying on static rules or anomaly detection. The company says this approach reduces false positives, minimizes manual investigation, and produces actionable behavioral timelines for security, legal, and HR teams. Above reports it has been revenue-generating for six months and that enterprise customers are deploying the platform without traditional policy configuration. It has built integrations across identity, endpoint, and SaaS ecosystems and is targeting organizations with more than 1,000 employees operating in SaaS-heavy environments. Above was founded in 2025 by Aviv Nahum and Amir Boldo, and was selected for the 2026 Cybersecurity Startup Accelerator backed by CrowdStrike, AWS, and NVIDIA.

  • Native

    Participated · Series A · Mar 2026

    Native provides a cloud security control platform that continuously translates security intent into enforceable, secure-by-design architecture across AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Its solution leverages each provider’s native controls to adapt security posture for multi-cloud enterprises. The company reports deployment with Fortune 100 customers across finance, technology, and media. Native currently has 41 employees across Tel Aviv and the United States and plans to grow to 90 employees by the end of 2026. Financially, the company completed a $31M Series A that brought total funding to $42M. The company was founded by CEO Amit Megiddo, CPO Gal Ordo, and CTO Eyal Faingold, and Phil Venables has joined its board.

  • Jazz

    Participated · Series A · Mar 2026

    Jazz is a New York City–based cybersecurity startup building an AI-driven Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solution called the “Agentic Investigator.” The platform deploys a forensic endpoint agent that analyzes full data-behavior context—including user intent and business processes—to separate normal activity from actual threats, replacing high-volume alerts with pre-investigated answers. Already in production at dozens of enterprises such as Lemonade, AlphaSense, and CAVA, the product aims to reduce alert fatigue and accelerate incident response for security teams. Having emerged from stealth, Jazz has secured $61 million in combined Seed and Series A funding to accelerate growth. The fresh capital will be directed toward scaling global operations, expanding enterprise adoption, and strengthening engineering, research, and go-to-market functions. Led by CEO Ido Livneh alongside co-founders Jake Tuertskey, Noam Issachar, and Yonatan Zohar, the company positions itself to lead the next generation of data security solutions.

Team

  • Seth Spergel

    Managing Partner & Co-Founder

    LinkedIn
  • Shay Michel

    Managing Partner & Co-Founder

    LinkedIn
  • Andrew Smeaton

    Chief Information Security Officer-in-Residence

    LinkedIn