Jyoti Bansal saw a vast and vulnerable API landscape — then he started Traceable.

As software products and services become increasingly complex and interconnected, sectors like finance, healthcare, retail, travel, and many more depend on APIs for interoperability, innovation, and growth.

APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, facilitate data sharing among the massive (and still growing) number of cloud-based programs. This allows businesses to implement effective third-party solutions, seamless payment pathways, personalized user experiences, targeted advertising, accelerated development, and differentiating features — all elements that are fundamental to an enterprise’s performance and scale.

The problem? Even as reliance on APIs has ballooned, so have concerns over information security. APIs are now the most common vehicle for cyberattacks; abuses and data breaches jumped 200% from 2021 to 2024. According to a 2023 report, six in 10 organizations experienced a data breach in the past two years.

That’s why Jyoti Bansal founded Traceable, an AI-powered platform that helps IT teams monitor, secure, and manage the whole of their APIs across all infrastructure, detecting and blocking anomalous behavior, cyberattacks, abuse, fraud, and data theft — automatically and in real time.

“As a solution to the existing and growing challenge of widespread API security threats, Traceable is unmatched,” says Rob Rueckert, a Partner at Sorenson Capital. “It’s no surprise that such a winning product would come from Jyoti Bansal, a well-known tech entrepreneur with a track record of identifying markets, building differentiated solutions, maintaining a competitive edge, and sustaining scale.”

Traceable is Bansal’s third company, and this is the second time he has received an investment from Sorenson; in 2021, the firm partnered with Harness. Since its founding four years ago, Traceable has achieved an impressive 300% year-over-year growth.

With APIs now touching all layers of tech and user activity, serving diverse purposes and exchanging overwhelming amounts of data, piecemeal threat detection is a nonstarter. Traceable finds and halts attacks faster and more effectively than other solutions by helping businesses monitor and assess the full context of their API infrastructure.

To date, Traceable’s platform has the capacity to deliver visibility and protection for thousands of API endpoints and more than 500 billion API calls per month. Machine learning models make it possible for Traceable to detect even the smallest deviation in expected behavior in a given use context, then assess for security threats.

Traceable’s value proposition has proven resonant. Existing enterprise customers include the digital bank, Axos Bank; the mobile-first credit card platform, Deserve; the innovative recruiting suite, Jobvite; a leading marketing data insights company, Nextroll; and many more. Traceable’s effectiveness and reliability have made the platform indispensable in highly regulated environments like finance, healthcare, telecom, and global retail.

Bansal possesses a passion and drive that one doesn’t see every day, even in the tech world. After selling his first company, AppDynamics, for $3.7 billion, he celebrated — but only for a few minutes. Bansal felt deeply that he wanted to continue to master his skills in the industry.

Shortly after selling AppDynamics, Bansal founded Harness; which was valued at $3.7 billion as of the last round of funding, and as Fortune recently pointed out: “Few founders have minted back-to-back unicorns.”

A year later, he co-founded Unusual Ventures. With so much exposure to the software innovation space, Bansal soon saw the need for an excellent API security solution — so he had no choice but to co-found Traceable with Sanjay Nagaraj in 2019.

Given how rapidly technologies — and bad actors — are projected to advance, Bansal says he will leverage the investments in Traceable to continue innovating at lightning speed. But his unique ability to execute on mission-critical tactics while adhering to the inspiring bigger picture — that might be this unicorn maker’s secret sauce.

“My advice to founders: If you have the opportunity, look for investors who sincerely believe in what you’re doing,” Bansal said recently. Finding investors with a fundamental understanding of the opportunity — and the potential challenges — is an integral element of Bansal’s success.