Hadrian Security raises $40M to expand AI agents that find exploitable weaknesses

Hadrian sells software that points artificial intelligence agents at a company's internet-facing systems to determine which weaknesses an attacker could actually exploit. The company claims no other vendor offers continuous exposure management and agentic penetration testing together on one platform. Its platform is split into two products, Atlas and Nova. Atlas maps an organization's external attack surface around the clock, and agents check whether each exposure can really be used in an attack. Nova handles penetration testing on demand. Because the two products share context, a team that finds something suspect in Atlas can send Nova in to dig deeper without starting over.

The funding comes less than a month after Anthropic PBC disclosed that criminal and state-linked groups had used its Claude models to automate attack chains and hunt for zero-day vulnerabilities. Hadrian argues that defenders have not caught up. By its count, 87% of organizations still rely on manual penetration tests, and just 0.47% of the findings vulnerability scanners produce turn out to be exploitable.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Rogier Fischer said AI, which is reshaping the threat landscape, may also hold the answer. In his view, 'most people are focused on automating the wrong bits.' Fischer said Hadrian has worked with large language models since before they went mainstream. He said the platform was built to emulate the attack paths hackers take so customers can see their biggest risks and decide where to put their security resources.

McKesson Corp., NBCUniversal Media LLC and TotalEnergies SE are among Hadrian's customers in the United States and Europe. Hans Quivooij, chief information security officer at Dutch shipbuilder Damen Shipyards Group N.V., said Damen used to rely on periodic assessments and a known asset inventory. Hadrian now gives the shipbuilder 'continuous visibility into what an attacker can actually see and potentially exploit,' he said. Across its customer base, Hadrian says, visibility into critical exposures is up tenfold and issues get resolved 80% faster.

The new money will go toward growth across Europe, the Middle East and Africa and in the United States. Hadrian's engineering and research teams are also set to get bigger.

Fischer started Hadrian in 2021 with Olivier Beg and Maurice Clin. He and Beg were ethical hackers in their teens, and Fischer later launched one of Europe's first cryptocurrency exchanges before working with Beg on Hadrian.

Forgepoint Capital International and Smartfin co-led the round. HV Capital, which led Hadrian's 2022 seed round, returned alongside Motive Partners, Picus Capital and Oetker Ventures. Smartfin partner Saumitra Dubey said the firm is backing the company's plan to 'build a nine-figure revenue business.' Investors have now put $65 million into Hadrian.