London and Amsterdam-based Hadrian raises €2.5M to offers security insights from the hacker perspective

Hadrian, a cybersecurity startup based out of London and Amsterdam, announced that it has raised €2.5M pre-seed round to build the first autonomous offensive security solution. 

The round was led by San Francisco-based Village Global and Amsterdam-based Slimmer AI, along with a group of international angel investors and experts including Alex Weiss (managing partner of US-based cybersecurity fund ClearSky), Manuel Stotz (founder of UK-based Kingsway Capital), Riva-Melissa Tez (US-based AI venture investor) Chris Vogelzang (former CEO Danske Bank), specialist cyber security investors Grace Cassy and Jonathan Luff from CyLon, and Alexander Ribbink (general partner Keen Venture Partners).

How was Hadrian born?

The cybersecurity startup was founded by a group of hackers and developers when they started seeing cyber attackers using AI and red teams failing to keep up. 

Cybercrime damages for 2020 are estimated to reach $1T. “We simply do not have enough experts in the world to keep the criminals out,” says co-founder Rogier Fischer.

Founded by Olivier Beg, Rogier Fischer, Tijl van Vliet, and Maurice Clin, Hadrian aims to renovate proactive security and make security insights autonomous and scalable.

“By building a truly autonomous offensive security solution we can help companies defend themselves. Digital infrastructures are growing, and this makes them vulnerable to large-scale, AI-supported, attacks. Launching an effective defence against AI requires state-of-the-art cloud-based technologies to autonomously develop and test new attack vectors,” says Rogier. 

The company uses cloud technology and machine learning to deliver scalable, accurate, and detailed security insights from the outside perspective. 

Hadrian says it can run thousands of scans and tests on thousands of clients continuously, in parallel, and without requiring the installation of an agent.

Investors 

Based out of Groningen, Slimmer AI is an AI B2B venture studio. The company generates ideas, co-builds, and invests in new ventures with innovative founders.

CEO of Slimmer AI JC Heyneke says, “Cybersecurity is a huge challenge with impact on all of society. Traditional technology approaches are not keeping pace—the only way to do so is through more autonomous solutions using machine learning. The Hadrian founders have the vision, drive, and experience to transform this industry.”

Village Global is an early-stage Venture Firm backed by successful entrepreneurs, including Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Diane Green, and Anne Wojcicki.