Cybercriminals are increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence in their attacks, while cyber defenders are simultaneously adopting the same technology to retaliate. Depthfirst, a security startup positioning itself at the forefront of this AI-driven defense, announced on Wednesday that it successfully raised $40 million in a Series A funding round.
Established in October 2024, the company’s funding round was led by Accel Partners, with contributions from SV Angel, Mantis VC, and Alt Capital.
Depthfirst offers a platform named General Security Intelligence, an AI-native suite designed to help organizations scan and analyze their codebases and workflows for potential vulnerabilities. The company states that this platform also enables businesses to protect against credential exposures and monitor threats from their open-source and third-party components.
The new capital will be used to expand the team, hiring additional staff for applied research, engineering, product development, and sales roles.
“We have entered an era where software is developed faster than it can be secured,” remarked Qasim Mithani, the company’s co-founder and CEO, during the announcement. Mithani, whose prior experience includes roles at Databricks and Amazon, added that automation has fundamentally altered how malicious actors execute their attacks. “AI has already transformed how attackers operate. Defense must evolve just as fundamentally.”
The company’s leadership team possesses strong backgrounds in both artificial intelligence and security. Daniele Perito, one of Depthfirst’s co-founders, previously served as director of security and risk engineering at Square, a part of Jack Dorsey’s Block. Its CTO (and another co-founder), Andrea Michi, was formerly an engineer at Google DeepMind.
While AI offers numerous legitimate applications, it can also be exploited by cybercriminals to automate a wide array of malicious processes — ranging from creating malware and conducting social engineering attacks to scanning for vulnerabilities to exploit. Last November, Anthropic claimed to have successfully thwarted the first “AI orchestrated cyber espionage campaign.”
Depthfirst asserts its capability to help protect companies from many of these “AI-driven exploits,” and highlights established partnerships with several prominent companies, including AngelList, Lovable, and Moveworks.