Swimlane’s Hero AI Aims to Turn Cybersecurity Chaos Into Clarity

By 2025, most enterprises have come to terms with the idea that cybersecurity isn’t simply a matter of tools, but of time. Time lost chasing compliance documentation, managing alerts across fragmented systems, and most importantly, time between detection and response. 

Swimlane, a Denver-based security automation company led by CEO James Brear, believes that agentic AI can help enterprises respond to threats, reason, act, and lead security teams into a faster, more secure future.

The company just announced a $45 million growth funding round led by Energy Impact Partners and Activate Capital, bringing its total raised to $204 million. The funds will drive global expansion, product development, and deeper integration of its flagship AI companion, Hero, across its hyperautomation platform, Turbine. The company is reportedly on track to achieve profitability by Q3 2025, fueled by a 110% increase in revenue since its last funding round. 

“We have redefined what’s possible in security operations by combining agentic AI with unmatched experience in highly scalable automation use cases that help customers solve real problems both in and outside the SOC,” said Brear.

Solving Security’s Complexity Crisis

Founded in 2014, Swimlane was a response to frustration with the traditional security operations center (SOC): a place overwhelmed by alerts, bogged down by manual processes, and disconnected from governance and compliance functions. The company’s early vision was to simplify and accelerate response workflows through automation.

But that vision has since evolved. With the introduction of Turbine, a low-code automation platform, and Hero, its agentic AI engine, Swimlane now takes on a broader band of use cases: compliance audits, vulnerability management, real-time threat response, and IT/OT integration.

According to Brear, what sets Swimlane apart is intelligent autonomy. “Hero brings the power of agentic AI into the hands of today’s defenders, turning complex processes into intelligent, streamlined actions,” he said.

Hero, built on a proprietary large language model and deployed on-premise for privacy, is able to interpret cases, recommend responses, summarize threat intelligence, and automate compliance reporting.

Tackling the Compliance Quagmire

One of Swimlane’s biggest breakthroughs has come in compliance. According to Swimlane’s own research, 71% of organizations admit they could fail a cyber audit. Compliance teams often rely on spreadsheets, disconnected tools, and time-consuming manual evidence collection. On average, just 39% of the audit evidence process is automated.

According to Swimlane, their AI-powered CAR (Compliance Audit Readiness) solution addresses this. Built into Turbine, CAR automates compliance control mapping, evidence collection, and real-time reporting across more than 30 frameworks including ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA and FedRAMP.

“Compliance isn’t just a GRC checkbox. it’s the backbone of a resilient security strategy,” said Michael Lyborg, CISO of Swimlane. “Swimlane’s CAR solution demolishes barriers, transforming compliance from a fragmented burden into a streamlined, strategic competitive advantage”. 

Adapting for Agentic AI 

“Swimlane stands out by delivering what the market desperately needs: scalable, intelligent automation that goes beyond the hype and actually works,” said Sameer Reddy, Managing Partner at Energy Impact Partners.

The stakes for cybersecurity are high. With rising regulatory pressure and increasingly complex threats, enterprises are under pressure to adapt. In this context, Swimlane’s platform offers an operational model for AI in cybersecurity, and their technology is helping security teams reclaim time, focus, and strategic relevance.

“This is about more than automation,” Brear said. “It’s about creating AI that truly understands and accelerates the way security teams work”.