On the 14th of January 2026, Aikido Security, announced that it raised a $60M Series B at a $1B valuation led by tech-focused private equity firm DST global making it among Europe’s first unicorns in 2026.
Willem Delbare, Roeland Delrue and Felix Garriau founded Aikido security in 2022. Aikido Security’s software helps developers detect and address risks automatically. It counts mobile app and game developer Niantic, Revolut fintech and Soundcloud music streaming platform amongst its customers.
“Aikido focuses on developers. The product is really meant for people who write software”, CEO Willem Delbare told Reuters in an interview. “You could see it as guardrails for writing secure software, especially if you’re using AI”.
Currently, Aikido security’s widespread adoption is because it combines code, cloud and runtime security into a single framework. Their latest innovation is a self-securing software called “Aikido Attack” that works by deploying hundreds of specialised agents on demand to hunt vulnerabilities, validate exploits, and provide built-in remediation and retesting of findings to ensure fixes hold.
The AI Arms Race: Navigating the Surge in Cyber AI Funding
Over the past year, cybersecurity funding has significantly increased. This can be linked to the rise in AI automated sophisticated attacks and has created a demand for AI-powered defense tools.
Furthermore, the surge in cyber AI funding favors startups that offer total automation. The world is moving away from traditional security systems that require manual oversight and drifting toward self-healing software like Aikido Attack.
These new systems don’t just notify if there’s a breach, they write the necessary patches and deploy them instantly. The market is also reacting to the explosion of AI-generated code.
Ultimately, as tools like GitHub Copilot help developers write software faster, security risks multiply, only an AI-driven security layer can scale fast enough to protect this new mountain of code. Aikido represents the beginning of this shift toward a machine-versus-machine defensive landscape.
