Armadin, Kevin Mandia's start-up, raises $255.5 million and exceeds $2.5 billion in valuation

Seven months after it came out of the shadows, the autonomous offensive security company closed a series B led by a16z and Accel, for a total of 445 million raised.

Armadin, founded and led by Kevin Mandia (the former boss of Mandiant), announced on October 1 a $255.5 million Series B round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel, with the arrival of Bain Capital Ventures and Redpoint. Historical investors — including GV, In-Q-Tel, Kleiner Perkins and Menlo Ventures — are putting money back into the pot. The valuation exceeds $2.5 billion and the total raised reaches $445 million, just seven months after the company emerged from the shadows.

Swarms of attacking agents

Armadin deploys swarms of specialized agents who behave like an experienced attacker: instead of assessing each flaw in isolation, they chain together minor weaknesses until they reconstruct entire scenarios, from remote code execution at the perimeter to taking control of a cloud environment. According to the company, these campaigns are already running in production at Fortune 500 customers and government agencies. The argument: Cutting-edge models shorten the time between the disclosure of a vulnerability and its exploitation so much that periodic penetration tests are no longer enough. The funds will be used to expand the platform, research and sales force.