AI security firm, depthfirst, announces $40 million series A

Cybercriminals are progressively utilizing AI successful their attacks. At the aforesaid time, cyber defenders are besides turning to the exertion to combat back. Depthfirst, a information startup positioning itself astatine the forefront of this AI-powered defense, announced Wednesday that it had raised $40 cardinal successful a Series A round.

Founded successful October 2024, the institution raised the circular from Accel Partners, which led the investment, with information from SV Angel, Mantis VC, and Alt Capital.

Depthfirst offers a level called General Security Intelligence, an AI-native suite that helps companies scan and analyse their codebases and workflows for signs of trouble. The institution says that the level besides allows companies to support themselves from credential exposures and to show threats to their open-source and third-party components.

The institution plans to usage the caller superior to prosecute further unit for applied probe and engineering, arsenic good arsenic merchandise and sales. 

“We’ve entered an epoch wherever bundle is written faster than it tin beryllium secured,” said Qasim Mithani, the company’s co-founder and CEO, arsenic portion of the announcement. Mithani, who antecedently worked for Databricks and Amazon, added that automation has changed however atrocious actors execute their attacks. “AI has already changed however attackers work. Defense has to germinate conscionable arsenic fundamentally.”

The company’s enactment comes with backgrounds successful some AI and security. One of Depthfirst’s different co-founders, Daniele Perito, antecedently served arsenic manager of information and hazard engineering astatine Square, which is portion of Jack Dorsey’s Block. Its CTO (and different co-founder), Andrea Michi, was antecedently an technologist astatine Google DeepMind.

Just arsenic AI tin beryllium utilized for morganatic purposes, it tin besides beryllium utilized by cybercriminals to automate a full scope of malicious processes—from penning malware to societal engineering attacks to scanning for vulnerabilities to exploit. Last November, Anthropic claimed that it had thwarted the archetypal “AI orchestrated cyber espionage campaign.”

Depthfirst says it tin assistance support companies from galore of these “AI-driven exploits,” and that it has already developed partnerships with a fig of salient companies, including AngelList, Lovable, and Moveworks.