Vanta has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Pillar Security, a company that tests, monitors and governs autonomous AI agents, the two companies announced Monday, Nov. 9. Neither side disclosed a price or a closing timeline. The deal gives Vanta, a security and compliance automation platform, a product that acts on AI agents while they run rather than only documenting policies about them.
Pillar was founded in 2023 by Ziv Karliner and Dor Sarig. Its platform helps companies discover the AI agents operating in their environments, run adversarial tests against them, and restrict them when they step outside approved behavior. Pillar's SAIL framework has passed 50,000 downloads and maps 91 AI risks across seven lifecycle phases, according to the company.
“Pillar makes AI security work at the speed AI operates.”— Ziv Karliner, CEO and Co-Founder of Pillar Security
Pillar's research team has reported critical vulnerabilities rated CVSS 10. Those include a sandbox escape in the n8n workflow platform that Pillar says exposed hundreds of thousands of enterprise AI systems to takeover, as well as a flaw in Google's Gemini CLI.
Key facts
- 01Vanta signed a definitive agreement on Nov. 9 to acquire Pillar Security; deal terms were not disclosed.
- 02Pillar, founded in 2023 by Ziv Karliner and Dor Sarig, tests, monitors and governs autonomous AI agents.
- 03Vanta plans AI inventory and runtime monitoring in January 2027, Pillar adversarial testing in spring 2027 and runtime enforcement by summer 2027.
- 04Vanta has more than 20,000 customers, up from about 16,000 in Q1 2026, and passed $300M in ARR in April 2026.
- 05It is Vanta's third acquisition, after Trustpage in January 2023 and Riskey in July 2025.
Vanta says the acquisition extends its Trust Platform by linking AI governance policies to real-time controls that monitor and limit what agents do. Pillar's capabilities will be connected to Vanta's Trust Graph so that a company's written policies drive both testing and runtime protection.
“Customers, regulators and auditors want proof that a company's AI does what it says on the tin.”— Christina Cacioppo, CEO and Co-Founder of Vanta
Vanta laid out a rollout schedule. An AI inventory feature arrives in January 2027 and will automatically map a company's AI apps, models, agents, skills and MCP servers, tied to owners, data access, vendors and risks. Runtime monitoring and detection also lands in January 2027. Adversarial testing from Pillar follows in spring 2027, and runtime enforcement is due by summer 2027.
Vanta is buying from a position of growth. The company says it has more than 20,000 customers, up from about 16,000 in the first quarter of 2026, and that it passed $300 million in annual recurring revenue in April 2026, up 63% year over year. Daily usage of the Vanta Agent rose 253% over the preceding three quarters, and demand for its AI governance product, in early access since July 2026, exceeds capacity sixfold. Customers include Snowflake, GitHub, Ramp and Cursor, along with three-quarters of the Forbes AI 50.
Vanta also pointed to its 2025 State of Trust Report, in which 65% of IT and business leaders said agentic AI adoption was outpacing their understanding of it. Only 48% said they had frameworks for granting or limiting AI autonomy.
IDC research director Phil Harris described the market as moving from AI governance on paper to governance at runtime, with security leaders asking for controls that act on agents directly.
“CISOs need controls that sit in the path and act in real time.”— Phil Harris, Research Director, Governance, Risk and Compliance Solutions at IDC
Pillar is Vanta's third acquisition, following Trustpage in January 2023 and vendor risk startup Riskey in July 2025. In their announcement, Pillar's founders said the shared goal is to help organizations govern AI as fast as they adopt it, with protections they can put into practice and trust they can demonstrate.
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