In a recent LinkedIn post, Daniela Andrade discusses the transformative journey of Galina Antova, co-founder and CEO of Kai, emphasizing Antova’s strategic approach to rebuilding cybersecurity for the age of artificial intelligence. Andrade frames Antova’s career not as an iteration on existing solutions, but as a pattern of creating entirely new categories in the security landscape.
From Cybersecurity Leader to AI Security Pioneer
Andrade details Antova’s impressive track record, noting her initial success with a company that raised approximately $900 million and became a global leader in cybersecurity. Despite this significant achievement, Antova chose to start anew, raising another $125 million to launch Kai. This decision, as highlighted by Andrade, underscores a commitment to tackling emerging challenges rather than resting on past successes.
“Most founders would stop there. She raised another $125M to start over.”
Before co-founding Kai, Antova spent over a decade in operational roles at companies like IBM and Siemens, where she led digital transformations and managed industrial security for critical infrastructure. Andrade stresses that Antova’s experience was deeply rooted in practical application, not just theory.
The Growing Problem of Fragmented Security
Andrade explains that Antova observed a persistent issue within the cybersecurity field: as technology advanced, security measures failed to keep pace. Companies were accumulating numerous tools and layers of security without achieving genuinely enhanced protection. This led Antova to co-found Claroty in 2015, a company focused on securing cyber-physical systems – the infrastructure underpinning essential services.
Claroty achieved significant success, defining its category and securing substantial funding. However, as Andrade points out, the underlying problem of fragmentation persisted. Cybersecurity became a complex web of dozens of tools, with teams often working in silos.
“Cybersecurity had become fragmented as dozens of tools stitched together and teams operating in silos.”
Rebuilding Cybersecurity for Machine-Speed Attacks
The advent of AI, according to Andrade’s post, dramatically altered the threat landscape. Attackers began operating at machine speed, leveraging automation and scalability. In contrast, defenders remained largely human and reactive, often hindered by the very systems designed to protect them.
This critical juncture prompted Antova’s decision to found Kai in 2025. Andrade emphasizes that Kai’s mission is not merely to improve existing cybersecurity frameworks but to fundamentally rebuild them.
Kai’s Agentic AI Platform
Andrade describes Kai as an agentic AI platform designed to automate security tasks. Key functionalities highlighted include:
- Continuous environment monitoring
- Real-time threat analysis
- End-to-end response execution
- Operation across systems without human bottlenecks
The platform aims to provide a unified system, eliminating silos and delays. Andrade notes the rapid progress Kai has made since its inception, securing Fortune 500 customers and achieving seven-figure bookings within its first year.
“Because the insight is simple: you cannot fight machine-speed attacks with human-speed defenses.”
A Pattern of System Creation
Andrade concludes by reflecting on Antova’s career as a recurring pattern of creating new categories rather than iterating on existing ones. First, it was cyber-physical security with Claroty, and now it is agentic AI security with Kai.
“The best founders don’t just build companies, they rebuild systems. And once you see the system clearly, you realize it was never meant to be patched. It was meant to be replaced.”
In Andrade’s view, Antova exemplifies founders who possess the clarity to identify systemic flaws and the courage to replace them entirely, rather than attempting incremental fixes.
📝 About This Content
This article is based on insights shared by Daniela Andrade on LinkedIn.
📅 Originally posted on April 12, 2026 | View original post on LinkedIn →