Cybercriminals are increasingly using AI in their attacks. At the same time, cyber defenders are also turning to technology to fight back. Security startup Depthfirst, which is at the forefront of this AI-powered defense, announced Wednesday that it has raised $40 million in a Series A round.
Founded in October 2024, the company raised a round from Accel Partners, which led the investment with participation from SV Angel, Mantis VC, and Alt Capital.
Depthfirst offers a platform called General Security Intelligence, an AI-native suite that helps enterprises scan codebases and workflows for signs of problems. The company says the platform also allows enterprises to protect against credential leaks and monitor threats to open source and third-party components.
The company plans to use the new capital to hire additional staff for applied research, engineering, product and sales.
“We have entered an era where software is being written faster than it can be made secure,” Kasim Mitani, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. Mithani, who previously worked at Databricks and Amazon, added that automation has changed the way malicious actors attack. “AI is already changing how attackers work, and defenses will need to fundamentally evolve as well.”
The company’s leaders have backgrounds in both AI and security. Daniele Perito, another one of Depthfirst’s co-founders, previously served as director of security and risk engineering at Square, part of Jack Dorsey’s Block. Its CTO (and other co-founder), Andreamichi, was previously an engineer at Google DeepMind.
Just as AI can be used for legitimate purposes, it can also be used by cybercriminals to automate a full range of malicious processes, from creating malware to social engineering attacks to scanning for vulnerabilities to exploit. Last November, Anthropic claimed it had thwarted the first “AI-orchestrated cyber espionage operation.”
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DepthFirst says it can help protect businesses from many of these “AI exploits” and says it has already built partnerships with a number of high-profile companies, including AngelList, Lovable, and Moveworks.
