In an era where machines are outnumbering human users across enterprise systems, identity security has hit a tipping point. Hungarian cybersecurity startup Riptides has emerged as one of the most promising players tackling this silent yet dangerous shift—securing non-human identities that power modern cloud and AI infrastructures.
Following a high-profile breach involving BeyondTrust’s Remote Support platform in 2024—which exposed flaws in how static credentials allow attackers to slip past human-centric defenses—Riptides is stepping in with a bold solution. Their platform replaces manually managed API keys and passwords with short-lived, cryptographically verifiable identities that rotate automatically, eliminating a major risk vector for enterprises.
Today, the Budapest-based startup has announced a $3.3 million pre-seed round—marking not just the largest in Hungary’s tech scene, but also one of the most significant early-stage deals in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The funding was co-led by PortfoLion Capital and Kaya VC, with participation from Cloudbreak (Riptides’ founding team’s fund), and both Hungarian and international angels.
This new wave of funding will accelerate the development of Riptides’ platform and support its growing partnerships with AI-native companies looking to retire legacy secrets management.
From Banzai Cloud to Riptides: A Proven Team Tackling a Growing Threat
Behind Riptides is a team with deep roots in enterprise security and cloud-native innovation. CEO Márton Sereg and Head of R&D János Mátyás previously co-founded Banzai Cloud (acquired by Cisco) and SequenceIQ (acquired by Hortonworks). CTO Zsolt Varga and CISO Nándor Krácser—both with prior stints at Cisco and IBM—bring decades of experience in building secure infrastructure and agentic AI systems.
Their mission is clear: build a security foundation for the modern internet where every interaction—especially between machines—is trusted by design.
According to Daniel Kiss-Kiraly of PortfoLion Capital, “The market spends billions on identity solutions that simply weren’t built for the explosion of machine-to-machine communication. Riptides is creating the new gold standard for managing non-human identities at scale.”
Reimagining Identity Security for AI-Driven Infrastructure
In traditional IT environments, firewalls and VPNs were enough to manage access. But with cloud-native architectures and AI agents communicating across data centers and third-party services, these defenses fall short. Riptides flips the model. It doesn’t just manage credentials—it eliminates static secrets entirely. Instead, it provides dynamic, verifiable identities that are tamper-proof, short-lived, and automatically rotated.
Their system operates at the kernel level, enforcing access controls right at the workload level, rather than relying on outdated perimeter-based security.
As investor Karel Zheng of Kaya VC put it, “Riptides offers a zero-friction, tamper-proof way to secure every machine interaction. They’re not just building a tool—they’re laying the identity foundation for the modern internet.”
Zero-Trust Infrastructure, Built for the Machines
Riptides is positioning itself as a key enabler of zero-trust security in the machine-first era. With machine identities now outpacing human users by 50 to 1—and projected to grow 30% annually—the startup aims to solve an urgent need for enterprise-scale cryptographic trust.
“Every AI agent, every automated workload, and every cloud-native service needs to talk to another system. Riptides makes those conversations secure by design,” says CEO Márton Sereg. “Because in a world run by machines, identity isn’t just important—it’s everything.”
Riptides is part of a new generation of CEE startups proving that deeptech innovation doesn’t need to come from Silicon Valley. With a record-setting round and a battle-tested team, the company is poised to shape how the internet’s next chapter gets secured—one machine identity at a time.
