Boston cybersecurity startup 7AI plans to double headcount

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/05/26/business/7ai-liv-dior-headcount-hiring/

Publish Date: 2026-05-26 06:05:00

One of Boston’s newer cybersecurity firms, three-year-old 7AI, recently celebrated hiring its 100th employee. Now cofounder and chief executive Lior Div says he’s going to double his workforce by the end of the year.

Div, who previously founded security firm Cybereason and sold a controlling stake to Japanese investment firm Softbank in 2023, said the fast-expanding capabilities of artificial intelligence apps in the hands of hackers have created massive demand for 7AI’s services. The Back Bay-headquartered company uses AI-powered agents to help companies and government agencies sort through millions of digital interactions a day across their computer networks and uncover hacking attacks.

The firm’s best sales pitch may have come from California AI giant Anthropic, which said last month it could not let the public use its newest, most powerful AI model, called Mythos, because the chatbot was too good at finding security vulnerabilities that crooks could exploit, even in older software that has been available for decades.

“The demand is just crazy,” Div said. His prior company “was growing very fast, but we never saw this level of demand from the market. I can smell that something very, very different is going on here.”

The security freak-out Anthropic sparked also sent the shares of larger, publicly traded cyber companies such as Crowdstrike and Palo Alto Networks up almost 50 percent over the past month.

The new employees, to be hired mainly for 7AI’s Boston office, will include software engineers, product developers, and marketers, Div said. The company has the funding to cover the new hires after raising $130 million in December, one of the largest venture capital deals for an early-stage cybersecurity company ever.

AI tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code programming app have dramatically cut the time it takes 7AI to roll out new features, from months to a single day in some cases, Div said. But the company still needs more people.

“Claude…

Source