Ghent-based Aikido Security, a security platform for developers and SMEs, has landed $17 million in a Series A funding round. The investment came from Singular.vc joined by Notion Capital and Connect Ventures, which just backed Tuza, a London fintech. The round in just six months after Aikido raised $5.3 million in seed funding.
With the latest round, Aikido Security becomes the fastest capitalised startup in Belgian history. The funds will be used to expand the platform and push the company onto the international stage to make security simple for SMEs and doable for developers.
Security platform for developers and SMEs
Aikido Security was founded by Willem Delbare, Roeland Delrue, and Felix Garriau in 2022, out of frustration with clunky, legacy security tools that waste developers’ time. The company centralises all necessary code and cloud security scanners to make security simple for SMEs and doable for developers.
It simplifies security for developers with an all-in-one platform that brings together all necessary code and cloud security scanners in one place. It has a simple UI with a freemium self-service model so developers can help themselves.
Its unified approach enhances control and significantly cuts down on false positives. So far, the company has saved over 1,500 developer working days that would otherwise be spent on false positives.
Aikido Security is claimed to offer the fastest way for a growing SaaS company to secure its platform. The application delivers swift, customer-led onboarding with an instant view of all the critical vulnerabilities to be solved in only a few minutes, lending users the time to focus on core business functions. It ranks vulnerabilities by severity, ensuring critical issues are addressed first. All security data stays within the platform, ensuring safety regardless of staff changes and aiding in business continuity.
Growth and achievements
Aikido Security has experienced record growth since its seed round in November 2023. As per the company, it is used by 3k organisations and 6k individual developers, growing at 10 new organisations per day. Its rapid growth includes a recent win with Visma, which chose Aikido to secure its portfolio of over 175 companies. With 30% of its customers in the US, Aikido aims for further international expansion to help developers get security done.
Henri Tilloy, who led the round at Singular.vc, said: “Aikido has an incredibly pragmatic and unique approach to security. It’s simple, leverages open-source, it’s easy to set up and use for developers; yet it ticks off the boxes of their company compliance and security requirements in one go.”
Willem Delbare, CTO and co-founder at Aikido Security said: “I wasted countless hours on irrelevant security alerts as a CTO. These legacy security platforms eat up developer time and honestly, they make you feel dumb. Developers are so swamped with complexity and false alerts, that they stop checking them all together. All I want is to get the fix, make sure we are safe, and get back to my code. I had to become a security expert instead.”
