Inside Artemis' "AI vs AI" war

• Artemis: AI-native security platform, $70M seed+Series A, 7 months old.
  • 30-person team; users average 3–4 hrs/day in product.
• AI-native ≠ AI-enabled: architecture difference is foundational, not cosmetic.
  • Legacy systems bolt AI on top; old logic remains the bottleneck.
  • True AI-native: agentic reasoning baked into core, not per-feature.
• 70% of customers ripped out legacy security tools entirely.
  • Attackers’ speed accelerating faster than defenders expected.
• Hiring: 60% of founder time; offers in 1.5 days, not 3 weeks.
  • Don’t screen for AI experience — screen for willingness to adopt it.
• Founder-led sales lesson: sales is just asking — for meetings, intros, the close.
  • Shachar texts every customer; mandatory for deal closure.
• ICP: 1,500+ employees, alert overload, complexity past in-house threshold.
  • 50% finserv, 50% tech; first customers asked to buy before being approached.
• Stealth exit signal: product discomfort (can’t deliver), not embarrassment (can).

Shachar Hirshberg (ex-AWS, ex-Palo Alto Networks) & Dan Shiebler (ex-Twitter ML, ex-Abnormal Security), co-founders of Artemis. Podcast with Josh Kopelman, First Round. · 2026-04-21 · Read on review.firstround.com