Opal Security
San Francisco, US · Founded 2020 · 8 known investors
Opal provides an identity governance platform that applies access controls across human users, AI agents, applications, and infrastructure from a single layer. It offers just-in-time privileged access, automated access reviews, and audit logging aimed at enterprises and regulated environments.
Founders & leadership
Opal Security was founded in 2020 by Stephen Cobbe and Umaimah Khan.
Investors · 8
Also in the syndicate · 5
Company profile
researched Aug 2026IMPORTANT DISAMBIGUATION: This profile is specifically about Opal Security, Inc. (opal.dev), a San Francisco-based enterprise access-management/identity-governance cybersecurity company, part of Greylock Partners' portfolio (confirmed directly on greylock.com/portfolio/opal/, which shows domain 'Cybersecurity', HQ 'San Francisco, CA', and CEO 'Howard Ting'). It is NOT related to: (1) Opal Camera, a consumer screen-time/wellness webcam device company; (2) 'Opal' the AI app-building tool from Google Labs; (3) any distraction-blocking productivity app also called Opal; or (4) other unrelated companies/products sharing the 'Opal' name. All facts below pertain to opal.dev only, cross-checked against Greylock's own site, TechCrunch, and Opal's own website.
Founding and early history: Opal was founded in 2020 by Stephen Cobbe, a former Dropbox software engineer, who according to TechCrunch (Oct 2021) built the founding team with people from Dropbox, Scale, Brex, MuleSoft, and Palo Alto Networks. Umaimah Khan joined as a co-founder and Head of Product; she previously worked at Amplitude and Collective Health (where she built internal authentication/authorization services), studied cryptography at MIT, and had a background in defense research. The company was based in San Francisco (with a TechCrunch 2021 article also citing a New York presence) and emerged from stealth in mid-2021, disclosing a Greylock-led seed round (reported as $1.8M, with participation from angel investors Tim Junio (Expanse CEO), Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security CEO), and Andrew Peterson (Signal Sciences CEO)). The original product let employees browse a self-serve catalog of systems/apps and request time-bound, least-privilege access, replacing static SAML/role-based provisioning; early customers cited included Blend, Coffee Meets Bagel, Databricks, and Marqeta.
Funding trajectory and leadership evolution: Opal raised a ~$10M Series A led by Greylock (announced June 2022), then a $22M Series B led by Battery Ventures with Greylock and Box Group participating (announced December 2023 by TechCrunch's Kyle Wiggers), which the company said brought its total raised to roughly $32M. By the time of the Series B, Umaimah Khan (not Stephen Cobbe) was described by TechCrunch as 'founder and CEO,' indicating a CEO transition had occurred between mid-2022 and late 2023 — Opal's public materials did not explain the transition in detail, and Stephen Cobbe's current role/affiliation with the company (if any) could not be confirmed. In November 2025, Opal Security appointed Howard Ting as CEO (a Business Wire release dated Dec 11, 2025 covered the appointment; Howard Ting himself, in a Feb 18, 2026 Unite.AI interview, stated he had been leading Opal 'since November 2025'). Ting is a veteran cybersecurity/enterprise-software executive: immediately before Opal he was an Executive in Residence at Greylock, and before that spent over five years as CEO and board director of Cyberhaven (also reportedly a Greylock-connected data-security company); earlier in his career he held marketing/product leadership roles at Redis Labs, Zscaler, Nutanix, Palo Alto Networks, Cisco (via its Securent acquisition), Microsoft, and RSA Security, plus early M&A experience at Banc of America Securities. Neither Umaimah Khan nor Stephen Cobbe appear on Opal's current (Aug 2026) public leadership/team page, suggesting they are no longer in day-to-day executive roles at the company, though this could not be independently confirmed with a dedicated departure announcement.
Business model
B2B enterprise SaaS sold via direct/field sales ("talk to sales" / "request a demo"; no self-serve public pricing found) to security, IT, and platform engineering teams at mid-market and large enterprises.
Subscription/license-based enterprise SaaS (exact pricing not publicly disclosed).
▸Full profile — profile (continued), go-to-market, ownership
Profile (continued)
In June 2026, Opal announced a further $23M raise, co-led by Greylock and Battery Ventures with participation from Cambium Capital, bringing total funding to $59M (per FinSMEs and Opal's own site, which states: 'Opal has raised $59 million from Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures, Box Group, SVCI, and Cambium Capital.'). Note: summing the individually reported round sizes ($1.8M seed + ~$10M Series A + $22M Series B + $23M 2026 round ≈ $56.8M) falls a bit short of the stated $59M cumulative total; this gap likely reflects rounding/imprecision in early-round disclosures or additional smaller tranches not separately reported in press coverage, and is flagged here as a minor unresolved discrepancy rather than corrected by assumption. The June 2026 round also came with a wave of senior hires: Sameer Mehta as Chief Product Officer (previously at Veza, a direct competitor), Alex Pien as Chief Technology Officer (previously at Meta), John Clark as VP of Field Engineering (previously at Cisco), Michael Kwon as VP of Marketing (previously at Clumio), and Christine Ooley as Head of Product & Solutions Marketing (previously at Salesforce) — essentially a full leadership refresh alongside the CEO change, consistent with a company repositioning itself for a new 'AI-native access governance' phase covering human, non-human (service accounts, CI/CD, API tokens), and AI-agent identities.
Product and market position: As of 2026, Opal markets three integrated capabilities: OpalQuery (plain-English querying across the access graph to surface risk, over-provisioned access, separation-of-duties conflicts, and privilege-escalation paths), OpalScript (turns approval rules into version-controlled, reusable policy workflows, either hand-written or AI-generated), and Paladin (an AI agent, launched around March 2026, that evaluates access requests, auto-approves what's safe, escalates the rest to humans, and revokes stale access). The company competes in the identity governance and administration (IGA) / access management space against larger incumbents like Okta, SailPoint, CyberArk, and Saviynt, and against newer/adjacent access-governance startups like Veza (from which it also poached its new CPO). Named customers across Opal's site and press coverage include Databricks, Chronosphere, Blend, Mercari, Sophos, Valon, CoinList, Elastic, Merge, Superhuman, Notion, Cloudflare, Scale AI, CoreWeave, and SpaceX AI (formerly referenced as 'Figma' and 'Marqeta' in earlier coverage). Opal was named to Notable Capital's 'Rising in Cyber 2026' list of the 30 most promising private cybersecurity startups (selected by roughly 150 CISOs). No IPO, acquisition, or shutdown has occurred; the company is private and actively operating as of August 2026.
Go-to-market
Security, IT, and engineering teams at cloud-native and SaaS-heavy enterprises that need to govern access for human employees, non-human/service identities, and increasingly AI agents.
Ownership
private
Compiled by commissioned research from 12 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Customers & partners
Named customers · 16
Relationships the company or its partners disclosed publicly — case studies, joint announcements, press.
Timeline · 7
launches, deals, and filingsOpal raises $23M co-led by Greylock and Battery Ventures (with Cambium Capital), bringing total funding to $59M; adds new CTO, CPO, and other VPs.
Opal launches Paladin, an AI agent that evaluates access requests, auto-approves low-risk ones, and escalates the rest to humans.
Howard Ting, previously an Executive in Residence at Greylock and formerly CEO of Cyberhaven, becomes Opal's CEO.
$22M Series B led by Battery Ventures with Greylock and Box Group participating, bringing total raised to ~$32M; company reports 4x ARR growth since Series A.
$10M Series A led by Greylock; 25-person team at the time.
TechCrunch reports Opal's $1.8M Greylock-led seed round and self-serve access-catalog product.
Opal founded by Stephen Cobbe (former Dropbox engineer), later joined by co-founder Umaimah Khan.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
▸Research sources · 12
primary sources listed
- Opal Security | Greylock PortfolioGreylock Partners · company site
- Opal Security | AI-Native Access GovernanceOpal · company site
- About Us | Opal Security IAM SolutionOpal · company site
- Our CustomersOpal · company site
- BlogOpal · company site
- Careers | OpalOpal · company site
12 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Opal Security do?
- AI-native access governance for every identity.
- Who founded Opal Security?
- Opal Security was founded by Stephen Cobbe, Umaimah Khan in 2020.
- Who are Opal Security's investors?
- Opal Security's investors include Battery Ventures, Cambium Capital, Greylock Partners.
- Where is Opal Security headquartered?
- Opal Security is headquartered in San Francisco, US.