Startup: Armorblox
VC: Steve Herrod, managing director at General Catalyst
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $16.5 million
What it does: Armorblox uses artificial intelligence to analyze and protect text-based communication from security threats.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Many companies claim to use AI to create better security solutions, often with more marketing bluster than technical substance. Armorblox is truly and deeply leveraging a branch of AI called Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to analyze and protect a company's most frequent form of communication - text. What's more, they can provide protection from phishing, data leakage, and other threats across all of the forms of text-based communication in a company - email, Slack, documents, texting, and more."