Hadrian Secures $40M to Scale AI-Powered Offensive Security Platform Across US and Europe

Hadrian Secures $40M to Expand AI-Powered Offensive Security Platform

Hadrian, an Amsterdam-based cybersecurity startup, has raised $40 million in Series B funding to expand its AI-powered offensive security platform across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the United States1

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. Forgepoint Capital International and Smartfin co-led the round, bringing Hadrian's total funding to $65 million1

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. Existing investors HV Capital, Motive Partners, Picus Capital, and Oetker Ventures also participated in the round1

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. The funds will support international expansion and the hiring of additional engineers and researchers to strengthen the company's AI-driven cybersecurity capabilities1

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How AI Agents That Find Weaknesses Work in Practice

Hadrian's platform tackles a critical gap in cybersecurity by using AI agents to identify which vulnerabilities attackers can actually exploit, rather than simply flagging every potential weakness. The company offers two integrated products: Atlas, which provides continuous exposure management by mapping internet-exposed assets around the clock, and Nova, which delivers on-demand penetration testing2

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. The Atlas platform employs AI agents to determine which flaws are genuine threats, while Nova conducts automated penetration testing that mimics real hacker behavior1

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. Because both products share context, security teams can seamlessly transition from identifying suspicious activity in Atlas to conducting deeper investigation with Nova2

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. This integrated approach enables customers to spot 10 times as many critical risks, fix problems 80% faster, and achieve five times the return compared to manual testing1

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Why AI-Driven Cyber Threats Demand Automated Defense

The timing of Hadrian's funding reflects an escalating arms race in cybersecurity. Last month, Anthropic published a threat intelligence report revealing that criminals and state-linked groups had used its Claude models to automate attack chains and hunt for zero-day vulnerabilities between December 2025 and August 20261

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. Hadrian argues that defenders have fallen behind, noting that 87% of organizations still rely on manual penetration tests1

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. More troubling, only 0.47% of the cybersecurity vulnerabilities flagged by traditional scanning tools turn out to be exploitable by attackers1

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. This massive signal-to-noise ratio overwhelms security teams and wastes resources on false positives.

Enterprise Adoption Signals Market Validation

Hadrian has secured major enterprise clients across industries, including McKesson, NBCUniversal, TotalEnergies, Amadeus, Leroy Merlin, and Damen Shipyards1

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. Hans Quivooij, chief information security officer at Damen Shipyards, explained that the company previously relied on periodic assessments and known asset inventories, but Hadrian now provides "continuous visibility into what an attacker can actually see and potentially exploit"2

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. The platform's ability to emulate actual attack paths helps organizations prioritize where to allocate security resources most effectively.

Founders Bring Deep Ethical Hacking Experience

Rogier Fischer founded Hadrian in 2021 alongside Olivier Beg and Maurice Clin1

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. Fischer and Beg started as teenage ethical hackers, and Fischer later co-founded LiteBit, one of Europe's early cryptocurrency exchanges1

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. Fischer emphasized that Hadrian has worked with large language models since before they went mainstream, positioning the company ahead of competitors in AI-driven cybersecurity1

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. "We know that AI can work much faster than any human offensive security team," Fischer stated, while noting that "most people are focused on automating the wrong bits"1

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Investor Confidence Points to Nine-Figure Revenue Target

Saumitra Dubey, a partner at Smartfin, said the firm is backing Hadrian's plan to "build a nine-figure revenue business"1

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. Hadrian previously raised a €2.5 million pre-seed round in 2021 and a €10.5 million seed round led by HV Capital in 20221

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. The company claims to be the only vendor offering continuous exposure management and agentic penetration testing together on one platform2

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. As AI reshapes both attack and defense strategies, watch for Hadrian's expansion into new markets and whether its unified approach to offensive security becomes the industry standard for identifying truly exploitable vulnerabilities before adversaries do.