Polygraf AI, based in Austin, Texas, announced the closing of their $9.5M seed round led by Allegis Capital and participation from Alumni Ventures, DataPower VC, Domino Ventures and previous investors to accelerate their mission to bring clarity and trust to enterprise AI. The latest round of funding will fuel product expansion, R&D, and go-to-market efforts focused on enterprise, defense and intelligence sectors. This investment in Polygraf AI comes at a critical moment for AI and cybersecurity intersection as high-stakes environments are leaving black-box AI solutions in-search for on-prem, explainable and auditable AI tools.
Technology pioneer Yagub Rahimov, co-founder and CEO of Polygraf AI, announced the company’s new funding today at the Techcrunch Disrupt in San Francisco to an audience of investors, business leaders, startup-founders and AI innovators.
As enterprises accelerate AI adoption to automate workflows, organizations face unprecedented risks from data leakage, shadow AI operations, deepfakes, and other synthetic threats. Polygraf’s proprietary Small Language Models (SLMs) offer an innovative multi-dimensional AI Security layer, one that protects not only data, but also the integrity of decisions, communications, and content produced by AI systems. Gartner, Inc. predicts that by 2027, organizations will implement small, task-specific AI models, with usage volume at least three times more than those of general-purpose large language models (LLMs).
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“Polygraf is tackling one of the most consequential problems of the AI era-TRUST.” said Spencer Tall, Managing Director at Allegis Capital, the lead investor in the round. “Their Small Language Model architecture and on-prem AI approach represent a fundamental shift in how enterprises will deploy and govern AI. We’re proud to partner with the Polygraf AI team to help enterprises adopt AI with confidence and compliance.”
Over the past year, Polygraf AI has experienced rapid growth across defense, financial services, insurance and healthcare niches, where data privacy and compliance are paramount. Running on as little compute power as 8Gb Ram and 1.3 Ghz CPU, Polygraf’s locally deployed AI modules have been credited with reducing deepfake fraud attempts, exposing insider risks, and providing actionable intelligence in mission-critical environments.
“The world is realizing that large, cloud-trained models come with large, unpredictable risks,” said Yagub Rahimov. “At Polygraf, we are on a mission to eliminate those risks. We’re proving that you can have both intelligence and integrity—a private AI for sensitive missions that is small, local, explainable, and trustworthy. This funding enables us to double down on our vision to protect the world’s most critical operations, where failure simply isn’t an option,” Rahimov added.
Polygraf’s innovations have been recognized by major industry events and media. In 2025, Polygraf AI was named Best in Show at SXSW, Best Insurtech/Fintech at Summerfest Tech, and recognized as the Top AI & Data Product by Products That Count. The company was also recently selected as one of the Top 10 Cybersecurity Startups at TechCrunch’s 2025 Battlefield 200, joining the ranks of the world’s most promising early-stage innovators
Security and compliance teams face growing regulatory pressure and a major increase in AI-driven attacks; Polygraf AI addresses these challenges with its proprietary SLM stack. These SLMs not only detect risks but also explain their decisions, support compliance audits, and align with strict data-sovereignty requirements. With this funding round, the company aims to expand their MSP (Managed Services Providers) & SI (System Integrators) base and to bring SLM’s to more enterprises.
SOURCE: Businesswire