Software development accelerated rapidly in 2025. AI code generation, autonomous agents, and continuous deployment collapsed build cycles from months to minutes. But vulnerabilities now appear faster than humans can process them.
Aikido addresses this with a unified platform that covers code, cloud, and runtime security. Instead of fragmented tools, developers get one interface that automatically detects, prioritises, and fixes risks without slowing deployment velocity. Customers such as the Premier League, Revolut, Niantic, and SoundCloud, plus 100,000+ teams globally, demonstrate demand.
Today, Aikido Security has become Europe’s fastest-growing cybersecurity unicorn. The Ghent-based startup raised $60 million at a $1 billion valuation led by DST Global, with participation from PSG Equity, Notion Capital, and Singular, to build autonomous security for the AI-driven development era.
Making security an engineering function
Willem Delbare founded Aikido in Ghent, Belgium, in 2022 with Roeland Delrue and Felix Garriau. The trigger was simple: every company Delbare worked with faced the same security problems. Tools overwhelmed teams with false positives and notification spam.
Aikido’s platform consolidates what usually requires 5+ tools: code security, cloud security, and runtime security. Its Aikido Attack, AI penetration testing, involves hundreds of specialised agents that hunt for vulnerabilities like hackers, validate exploitability, and provide remediation.
Unlike Snyk, GitHub Advanced Security, Checkmarx, and Veracode, Aikido outperforms in false-positive filtering, unified coverage, and autonomous capabilities.
What’s next?
The investment fuels autonomous security loops embedded in every code release, expanding Aikido Attack’s agent capabilities to detect complex attack chains and autonomously remediate code with AI.
