The debut of the program follows the arrival of industry veteran Zachary Kilpatrick, formerly of Cribl and Okta, as channel chief.
7AI unveiled its first formal channel program Thursday as the startup looks to double down on scaling through partners—building on existing strong demand for its agentic SOC (Security Operations Center) platform, the company told CRN exclusively.
The debut of 7AI’s new partner program follows the arrival of channel veteran Zachary Kilpatrick, formerly of Cribl and Okta, as senior vice president for global alliances in June.
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In an interview with CRN, Kilpatrick said that the program standardizes a “partner-first” strategy at the two-year-old company, which has already led to sourcing nearly half of 7AI’s business through the channel.
7AI’s agentic SOC platform provides autonomous investigation of security alerts while deploying agents to perform other formerly manual tasks for security analysts. The platform’s agents have now overseen more than 7 million security investigations, according to the startup.
At launch, the 7AI Alliance Partner Program consists of two tiers and offers deal registration, discounts, incumbency protection and enablement, as well as dedicated sales and technical resources.
A key aim of the program is to bring a focus on simplicity, Kilpatrick said.
“The days of these very large, convoluted partner programs [are] in the past,” he said. “Ultimately, partners care about solution value—what problems can you help me solve for my customers—whether or not that’s going to be profitable for me, and whether or not that’s going to be sticky in my customer accounts.”
A major opportunity for partners will come from building services around 7AI’s agentic SOC platform, according to Kilpatrick.
That could include MSSPs incorporating 7AI into managed security offerings or system integrators deploying the technology within projects for security operations modernization, he said.
Kilpatrick had most recently served as vice president for global go-to-market partners at Cribl since 2021. Before that, he spent six years at Okta, ultimately serving as its vice president for North America alliances.
Partner Perspective
Cybersecurity powerhouse GuidePoint Security began collaborating with 7AI while the startup was still developing its initial technology and has been working closely with the startup all along the way, according to GuidePoint’s Mark Thornberry.
The pace at which 7AI moved from its original idea to launching a product to the market was highly impressive, said Thornberry, senior vice president for partnerships at Herndon, Va.-based GuidePoint Security, No. 32 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500 for 2026.
The partnership has since grown into delivering 7AI to numerous customer accounts, with particularly strong traction in recent quarters, Thornberry said.
“There’s a huge appetite at GuidePoint to partner with them,” he said.
Without a doubt, while the agentic SOC segment is crowded with a number of players at the moment, it’s also an area of high priority for many customers, Thornberry noted.
When it comes to security operations, “for most of our customers—if it’s not their primary pain point, it’s certainly one of them,” he said.
Thornberry also applauded the formalization of 7AI’s partner program and hiring of key channel leadership—saying that it shows just how rapidly the startup has been maturing on the partnership side, as well.
All in all, “we’re very bullish on the partnership,” he said.
‘Customers Need Partners’
7AI was launched in 2024 by CEO Lior Div, a repeat entrepreneur in security who was formerly CEO and co-founder of Cybereason, and CTO Yonatan Striem-Amit, also formerly a Cybereason co-founder.
In December 2025, 7AI raised a $130 million Series A funding round, led by Index Ventures. The round was the largest Series A in cybersecurity industry history at the time, according to 7AI.
Div told CRN previously that 7AI has been placing a major focus on the channel from the beginning—and the results have been tremendous.
“The number [of deals] that the partners are generating is crazy,” Div said in April.
And even as a company so heavily built around AI, the idea of cutting out the partner is unthinkable, he said.
“It’s the opposite,” Div said. “People need people. And the customer needs those trusted partners.”
