AI-Powered Startup Octane Raises $6.75M to Combat Blockchain Hacks

Winklevoss-Backed Startup Octane Raises Millions to Fight Blockchain Hacks with AI - Decrypt

Despite being built for resilience, blockchain projects remain vulnerable to cyberattacks, especially those targeting individual projects and cross-chain bridges. In recent years, these weak spots have cost the industry billions. A new San Francisco startup, Octane, believes artificial intelligence can help stem the bleeding. In 2024, hackers stole approximately $2.2 billion worth of crypto through exploits. Just four months into 2025, that figure has already nearly been matched, underscoring the urgency of better security. Launched in 2023, Octane is led by San Francisco-based software engineer and CEO Giovanni Vignone, who believes the blockchain industry can no longer afford to sideline cybersecurity. "Throughout my time in crypto, I've seen countless hacks and exploits. There's a huge problem -- over $11 billion has been drained from the ecosystem," Vignone told Decrypt. "Despite teams spending $50,000 to $200,000 a year on securing codebases, hacks keep happening." The growing cybercrime epidemic targeting the blockchain space led Vignone to develop Octane, an AI-powered code auditor that assists developers in real time by identifying vulnerabilities as they write. Octane integrates directly into the GitHub pipeline, running continuously as developers write code. It automatically summarizes API pull requests, flags potential vulnerabilities, and helps teams identify exploits early, maximizing their ability to fix critical bugs and address lower-severity issues. On Tuesday, Octane announced it had closed a $6.7 million funding round to expand its operations. The round was led by Winklevoss Capital and crypto investment firm Archetype, and participants included Druid Ventures, Circle, Gemini, Legion Capital, Duke Capital Partners, among others. "The importance of making crypto applications more secure is obvious, and Gio and his world-class team have built just the platform to meet this need and help crypto devs and crypto companies ship more secure code," Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss said in a statement. Vignone said Octane was initially designed for the Solidity programming language and Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible projects. The team plans to expand support to Solana and other blockchains. Looking ahead, Vignone said Octane's long-term vision goes beyond catching bugs -- redefining how security is built into the development process. "Our goal at Octane is to build the future of security by bringing every crypto team an AI security engineer -- trained on millions of exploits and data points -- who specializes in identifying vulnerabilities and helping developers triage them," he said.

Crypto security startup Octane emerges from stealth with $6.75 million Seed round

This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author. The round also included participation from Gemini, Circle, Legion Capital, Druid Ventures, Duke Capital Partners and strategic angels including Balaji Srinivasan, Sina Habibian, and many others. Octane is an AI cybersecurity startup using machine learning to identify and fix vulnerabilities in blockchain codebases. With crypto hacks exceeding $11 billion according to DefiLlama, the growing market cap has intensified the risk posed by flawed contracts, especially given crypto's low-friction financial rails that make fund extraction easier for attackers. The company continuously analyzes onchain smart contracts, equipping developers with AI-powered tools for proactive threat detection and one-click bug fixes. This approach enhances developers' ability to catch bugs before deployment and throughout the entire software development lifecycle, addressing a critical security gap in the industry. Octane will soon offer code analysis for offchain codebases as well. "Flawed blockchain code enables billions in theft across crypto, with vulnerable smart contracts creating an ever-expanding attack surface as more value enters the ecosystem," said Giovanni Vignone, CEO, Octane. "Octane's AI continuously scans codebases, empowering developers with proactive threat detection and one-click fixes throughout the entire development lifecycle -- eliminating vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them." Octane will use the funds to increase product development velocity, expand their team, mass label vulnerability data, and get their platform into the hands of every developer building in crypto. "Securing smart contracts on the blockchain is one of the biggest challenges facing any crypto developer," said Tyler Winklevoss. "Octane allows devs to battle-test their smart contract code with AI-powered security testing before it hits production on the blockchain. This is huge for devs, companies, and mainstream crypto adoption." "The importance of making crypto applications more secure is obvious and Gio and his world-class team have built just the platform to meet this need and help crypto devs and crypto companies ship more secure code," added Cameron Winklevoss. "We're excited to back them on this journey." "We're thrilled to back Gio and the team at Octane as they develop a powerful new method of mitigating hacks, crypto's most critical vulnerability," says Ash Egan, General Partner at Archetype. "By leveraging LLMs to identify attack surfaces before deployment, we believe Octane expands the crypto security purview beyond traditional audits and does so with a developer-first mentality. The Archetype team is ecstatic to lead Octane's $6.75M Seed round and help evolve crypto security alongside the technology and asset class."

Gemini-Backed Octane Raises $6.75M - Is AI the Answer to Crypto Hacks?

The Winklevoss twins' backing of Octane underscores the critical need for advanced security measures in the cryptocurrency industry. Octane Funding:- Crypto Hacks still persist as the billion-dollar problem for the Web3 industry. Due to its transparent and decentralized nature of the blockchain technology, blockchain and crypto platforms remains vulnerable to hacks. In 2024 alone, the amount of cryptocurrency stolen through hacking surged by 21% compared to the previous year, totaling approximately $2.2 billion. This marks the fourth consecutive year where hacking losses have exceeded $1 billion. Now, in a bet to combat this, Gemini founders' VC Firm, Winklevoss Capital, is investing in a San Francisco-based AI Cybersecurity start-up to mitigate the threat. On Tuesday, the cybersecurity firm, Octane, announced a $6.75 million seed round co-led by Winklevoss Capital, the family office of Gemini founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and Archetype. Other backers of the platform include Gemini Frontier Fund, the crypto exchange's venture arm, Circle, Druid Ventures, Duke Capital Partners and certain strategic angels including former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, Sina Habibian, and many others.. Developed by a 22-year old Duke University dropout, Giovanni Vignone, Octane aims to prevent the multi-million dollar hacks before they happen. Smart contracts as the self-executing contracts with the terms directly written into code, are usually deployed on blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, or BNB Chain. Once deployed, they run exactly as programmed, without the possibility of being changed. However, they're immutable, meaning even if there's a bug or vulnerability. We can't patch them like traditional software -- unless we've built in an upgrade mechanism. To solve this, Octane is leveraging the potential of Artificial Intelligence to identify the protocol-specific bugs alongside typical coding issues. Its core product lies in Code Fix Engine, which is built to fix vulnerabilities in Solidity smart contracts. Using AI algorithms, it's Code Fix Engine sound automatically to draft a fix, cutting down manual time significantly. Kind of vulnerabilities it works on include Rounding Errors, Fund Lock Vulnerabilities, Denial of Service conditions, and especially tricky Oracle Misconfigurations. The platform utilizes machine learning algorithms to analyze patterns and anomalies within blockchain transactions, aiming to identify potential threats before they materialize. Notably, Will McEvoy, investor for Gemini Bros at Winklevoss Capital, said that the existing core solution of smart contracts reliance is broken. Calling it "medieval", he said that since it relies on manual, human-based reviews, it remains susceptible to hack. As per the information available on its website, Octane's technology focuses on real-time monitoring and analysis of blockchain transactions. By continuously learning from transaction data, the AI system can adapt to emerging threats and provide timely alerts to prevent unauthorized activities. Further, post-funding, its CEO Giovanni Vignone revealed in a blog post that it has already been working on finding vulnerabilities in manual audits for leading web3 firms. This includes viz., Circle, Redstone, TrustWallet. Notably, this dynamic approach can offer a significant advantage over static security protocols, which may not be equipped to handle evolving cyber threats. With the funding, Octane aims to use the funds to increase product development velocity, expand its team and bolster its capabilities of mass label vulnerability data. Its ultimate aim is to get their platform into the hands of every developer building in crypto. The recent incident of Bybit Hack is still fresh in our minds. Since traditional security measures have often fallen short in addressing the sophisticated tactics employed by hackers. Octane's AI-driven approach represents a proactive strategy. Its aim of preemptively identifying and neutralize threats before they can inflict damage can be truly beneficial for the industry if implemented as visualised. Further, the Winklevoss twins' backing of Octane underscores the critical need for advanced security measures in the cryptocurrency industry. As co-founders of Gemini, a prominent cryptocurrency exchange, they have firsthand experience with the challenges posed by cyber threats.

Octane Secures $6.75 Million for AI-Powered Cybersecurity Solution for Blockchain | PYMNTS.com

AI cybersecurity startup Octane has emerged from stealth and announced it secured $6.75 million in a seed funding round. Octane will use the funding to accelerate the development of its platform that uses machine learning to continuously analyze blockchain codebases, identify vulnerabilities and remediate them before they can be exploited, the company said in a Tuesday (April 8) press release. "Flawed blockchain code enables billions in theft across crypto, with vulnerable smart contracts creating an ever-expanding attack surface as more value enters the ecosystem," Octane CEO Giovanni Vignone said in the release. Octane's platform helps developers catch bugs before deployment and throughout the software development cycle, according to the release. It will soon offer code analysis for off-chain codebases as well. The company's seed funding round was co-led by Archetype and Winklevoss Capital, per the release. "Securing smart contracts on the blockchain is one of the biggest challenges facing any crypto developer," Tyler Winklevoss said in the release. "Octane allows devs to battle-test their smart contract code with AI-powered security testing before it hits production on the blockchain. This is huge for devs, companies and mainstream crypto adoption." A growing share of chief operating officers at organizations that generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue have implemented AI-powered automated cybersecurity management systems, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report, "COOs Leverage GenAI to Reduce Data Security Losses." The report found that the share of these COOs who said their companies have implemented these systems leapt from about 17% in May to 55% in August. This growth has been driven by COOs' demand for GenAI-driven solutions to improve cybersecurity management at a time when companies face the threat of cyberattacks that are growing more sophisticated, according to the report. Dream, a company focused on AI-powered cybersecurity for nations and critical infrastructure, said in February that it raised $100 million in a Series B funding round to expand into additional markets in which cyber threats pose challenges to national security. In September, Torq raised $70 million in a Series C funding round to expand its AI-first cybersecurity hyperautomation solutions that automate, manage and monitor critical security operations center (SOC) responses.