Rotem Lurie raises $25 million Series A for Venice, an identity security startup backed by Wiz founders
The Israeli company replaces static enterprise permissions with dynamic access control.
Startup Venice (formerly Valkyrie) has raised $25 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by U.S.-based fund IVP, with participation from Index Ventures, Vine Ventures, Holly Ventures, and several angel investors, including Assaf Rappaport (co-founder and CEO of Wiz), Raz Herzberg (CMO of Wiz), Dor Knafo and Gil Azrielant (founders of Axis), and the founders of Descope. The company previously raised $8 million in a Seed round.
Venice develops identity security software that maps access across an entire organization and eliminates permanent access to sensitive information. Its platform enables uniform and consistent control over the identities of employees, contractors, machines, and AI systems, ensuring that access is granted only to authorized entities and only for the time required.
The company operates offices in Tel Aviv and New York and employs around 20 people.
In a conversation with Calcalist, Rotem Lurie, CEO and co-founder of Venice, said the company is focused on transforming how organizations manage permissions.
“We help organizations manage permissions so that everyone has the access they need, exactly when they need it,” she said. “We are shifting from a static permissions model to a dynamic one. That enables customers to work faster and more efficiently.”
Lurie argues that traditional identity security approaches have focused primarily on convenience rather than adaptability.
“For years, companies assumed the root of identity security was making access as convenient as possible,” she said. “But what has changed is the scale and dynamism of modern environments. Humans can manage things manually, but organizations operating at today’s speed, especially with AI agents, need systems that can handle constant change.”
Venice competes with identity security providers such as CyberArk, which was acquired by Palo Alto Networks.
The company sells primarily to large U.S. enterprises and says it has replaced legacy identity solutions already in place at those organizations.
“We are formally launching the company now, two years after founding it, with a very mature and deeply built product, not something developed quickly in the cloud,” Lurie said. “We were not afraid to go deep and secure environments beyond just cloud systems, including older, legacy infrastructures.”
Venice was founded in 2024 by Lurie (CEO) and Or Vaknin (CTO). The two met in IDF intelligence units. Vaknin later joined the founding team and became one of the first employees at Transmit Security and Flow Security, which was acquired by CrowdStrike, following his service in Unit 8200.
Lurie grew up in a family of programmers; her mother was among Israel’s early software developers and worked for many years at Ness and other startups. Lurie began her career at Microsoft as an intern while pursuing her undergraduate degree, and later served as head of product management at Axis until its acquisition by HPE.
“My mother was a developer at a time when there were very few women in the field,” Lurie said. “I grew up in a home that allowed me to dream without limits. That perspective shaped how I think about building a company.”
She emphasized that diversity has been a deliberate priority at Venice.
“Our team is very diverse, with equal numbers of women and men,” she said. “If you try to build a company only from people you knew in Unit 8200, you won’t succeed. We are building a company based on broad diversity and empathy for users.”
