Cylake Appoints Palo Alto Networks Veterans to Board and Secures In-Q-Tel Strategic Investment
Cyber Security / Foundational Security | 4 min read
Cylake, a Sunnyvale-based cybersecurity company building a complete, AI-native, data-driven security platform for the world's largest and most regulated institutions, has announced the formation of its Board of Directors alongside an additional strategic investment from In-Q-Tel (IQT) — the not-for-profit strategic investor that has served the US national security community for 25 years. The board brings together four individuals who each individually served for more than a decade on the board of Palo Alto Networks: Mark McLaughlin, Jim Goetz, Asheem Chandna, and Nir Zuk — who is also Cylake's CEO and Founder. The announcement follows Cylake's March 2026 launch, which was backed by a $45 million seed round led by Greylock Partners.
"The challenge we are addressing is structural and fundamental. It requires long-term thinking and an understanding of how cybersecurity systems behave at scale. Our board members have seen firsthand how some of the world's largest organisations need a new approach to security. Their guidance and support is incredibly valuable."
— Nir Zuk, CEO and Founder, Cylake
"IQT looks for companies addressing important technical challenges with long-term implications. Cylake is focused on a problem that becomes more pronounced at scale, particularly in complex and regulated environments. We look forward to supporting the team as they continue development."
— Katie Gray, Senior Partner, In-Q-Tel (IQT)
The Problem Cylake Is Built to Solve
Cylake is being built specifically for the cybersecurity challenges faced by the world's largest and most regulated institutions — organisations that often cannot rely on public cloud infrastructure for their security stack due to sovereignty, control, and accountability requirements. In these environments, security systems are frequently fragmented across many tools, each operating on partial data. Over time, this fragmentation creates gaps in visibility, increases operational risk, and makes it progressively harder to maintain control at scale. Cylake's response is a complete cybersecurity architecture built around a single data foundation — designed from the ground up for environments requiring full data sovereignty, on-premises or private deployment, operational control, and accountability. The IQT investment is intended to accelerate platform development and support Cylake's continued progress toward production, with the partnership explicitly targeting the intersection of complex, regulated, and national security environments where the problem of fragmented security tooling is most acute.
A Board Built From Palo Alto Networks Lineage
The significance of the board composition goes beyond individual credentials. Mark McLaughlin (former CEO of Palo Alto Networks and former CEO of Verifone), Jim Goetz (partner at Sequoia Capital, early Palo Alto Networks investor and board member), Asheem Chandna (partner at Greylock Partners, which led Cylake's seed round), and Nir Zuk (co-founder of Palo Alto Networks, now CEO of Cylake) collectively represent the team that built and governed one of the most consequential cybersecurity platforms in the industry's history — from startup to a company valued in the hundreds of billions. Their collective expertise spans company building from zero, long-term platform strategy in security, and operating global-scale cybersecurity products in the most demanding enterprise and government environments. Co-founding the company alongside Zuk are Wilson Xu and Ehud (Udi) Shamir, with a team of experienced security engineers and operators.
Key Takeaways
- • Cylake has formed a Board of Directors comprising Mark McLaughlin, Jim Goetz, Asheem Chandna, and Nir Zuk — four individuals who each individually served for more than a decade on the board of Palo Alto Networks — and signed a strategic investment agreement with In-Q-Tel (IQT), accelerating platform development for national security and regulated-environment deployment.
- • Cylake's core problem statement: the world's largest and most regulated institutions cannot rely on public cloud security stacks, and operate fragmented security tooling across many tools each working on partial data — creating progressive visibility gaps, increasing operational risk, and making control at scale harder over time. This is characterised as structural and fundamental, not incremental.
- • Cylake's solution: a complete cybersecurity architecture built around a single data foundation — designed specifically for on-premises and private environments requiring full data sovereignty, operational control, and accountability. Co-founded by Nir Zuk (CEO), Wilson Xu, and Ehud (Udi) Shamir, with a team of experienced security engineers.
- • In-Q-Tel (IQT) — the not-for-profit strategic investor serving the US national security community and its allies for 25 years — has signed an investment agreement with Cylake, specifically citing the company's focus on a problem that becomes more pronounced at scale in complex and regulated environments as the rationale for investment.
- • Context: Cylake launched in March 2026 with a $45 million seed round led by Greylock Partners (Asheem Chandna's firm, now also a board member). The IQT investment and board formation represent the next phase of development — accelerating the platform toward production deployment in the most demanding regulated and national security environments.