Nightfall raises $20.3 million for AI that prevents sensitive data leaks

Nightfall (formerly Watchtower AI), a San Francisco-based provider of cloud data loss prevention solutions, today emerged from stealth with $20.3 million in funding led by Bain Capital Ventures and Venrock, with participation from Pear VC and Atlassian CTO Sri Viswanath. CEO Isaac Madan said the proceeds from this latest round will bolster Nightfall's R&D and market expansion. "Our mission at Nightfall is to build the control plane for cloud data, enabling enterprises to know what data they have across the cloud, and to proactively manage and protect that information," said Madan, who was previously with Venrock's investment division. Nightfall's eponymous platform monitors data flowing into and out of the services a customer uses, which machine learning algorithms classify as sensitive, personally identifiable (PII), noncompliant (with regulations like HIPAA and GDPR), or safe to share. Using a visual dashboard, admins can set up automated workflows for quarantines, deletions, alerts, and more that integrate with dozens of software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms and APIs, and view analytics metrics like real-time and historical PII count by type.