Exein has just become one of Europe’s most valuable cybersecurity startups with a $270 million round, on the bet that AI-powered machines need defences that move as fast as the attacks against them.
The Rome-based startup raised fresh funding in a round led by US investor Headline, alongside Sofina, Goldman Sachs and Balderton Capital among others. The round values it at $1.7 billion, a 30-fold increase in two years.
Exein is now Europe’s third most valuable cybersecurity startup, according to PitchBook data, behind Terra Quantum—which in May agreed a $3.5 billion SPAC deal set to complete in H2—and Nord Security.
Founded in 2018, Exein originally set out to secure internet of things devices by embedding cybersecurity code directly into them, rather than guarding them on the network. Now, the startup is making a push into the physical AI space.
“AI is moving out of the cloud and into the physical world, and this is the transition Exein was built for,” co-founder and CEO Gianni Cuozzo said. “Frontier models are pushing the patch window to zero. Attacks now happen at machine speed, so defence has to as well. Physical AI is the natural next step for Exein: we’re building machine-time security for machine-time attacks.”
To combat threats in an increasingly AI-driven environment, Exein launched its new tool, Photon, in March. The system is designed to block malicious code before it executes, preventing threats in real time before they have an impact.
With the new funding, Exein has plans to go deeper with a proprietary foundation model trained on two years of machine telemetry from over two billion connected devices. The model will power autonomous security agents to protect the systems they run on without human intervention.
Exein’s round comes amid a surge in AI-enabled cyberattacks. As AI powers drones, robots and autonomous vehicles, the cost of an attack is no longer just data but also potential physical harm.
As AI fuels more attacks, appetite for Europe’s cybersecurity startups has deepened.
VC funding for the vertical has reached €2.4 billion (about $2.8 billion) this year, according to PitchBook data, and is on track to exceed last year’s annual total. Deal count is set to reach its lowest level since 2020 at the current pace, as capital becomes more concentrated.
Exein’s round is the largest to have closed this year, surpassing Israeli sovereign AI and cyber-defence startup Dream‘s $260 million investment in June. Other notable deals include $140 million investments for two Israeli startups: AI model protection company Alice and agentic AI security startup Torq.
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