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Cybercriminals are increasingly using AI in their attacks. At the same time, cyber defenders are also turning to the technology to fight back. Depthfirst<\/a>, a security startup positioning itself at the forefront of this AI-powered defense, announced Wednesday that it had raised $40 million in a Series A round.<\/p>\n Founded in October 2024, the company raised the round from Accel Partners, which led the investment, with participation from SV Angel, Mantis VC, and Alt Capital.<\/p>\n Depthfirst offers a platform called General Security Intelligence, an AI-native suite that helps companies scan and analyze their codebases and workflows for signs of trouble. The company says that the platform also allows companies to protect themselves from credential exposures and to monitor threats to their open source and third-party components.<\/p>\n The company plans to use the new capital to hire additional staff for applied research and engineering, as well as product and sales.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve entered an era where software is written faster than it can be secured,\u201d said Qasim Mithani, the company\u2019s co-founder and CEO, as part of the announcement. Mithani, who previously worked for Databricks and Amazon, added that automation has changed how bad actors execute their attacks. \u201cAI has already changed how attackers work. Defense has to evolve just as fundamentally.\u201d<\/p>\n The company\u2019s leadership comes with backgrounds in both AI and security. One of depthfirst\u2019s other co-founders, Daniele Perito, previously served as director of security and risk engineering at Square, which is part of Jack Dorsey\u2019s Block. Its CTO (and another co-founder), Andrea Michi, was previously an engineer at Google DeepMind.<\/p>\n Just as AI can be used for legitimate purposes, it can also be used by cybercriminals to automate a whole range of malicious processes \u2014 from writing malware to social engineering attacks to scanning for vulnerabilities to exploit. Last November, Anthropic claimed that it had thwarted the first \u201cAI orchestrated cyber espionage campaign<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> Depthfirst says it can help protect companies from many of these \u201cAI-driven exploits,\u201d and that it has already developed partnerships with a number of prominent companies, including AngelList, Lovable, and Moveworks. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n