Aikido Security, a Ghent-based outfit working on developer-friendly software security solutions has today announced the raise of €5 million in a Seed funding round. The investment will be used to onboard product, development, marketing, and sales team members, as well as continue to strengthen the company’s market position in Europe and North America.
Much like the modern Japanese martial art that is split into many different categories, Aikido Security serves as an all-aspects defense tool for developers.
The platform scans the source code and often wide variety of cloud components involved in SaaS organisation operations and ranks vulnerabilities by severity, ensuring critical issues are addressed first and separating them from false positives.
Aikido CEO and CTO Willem Delbare elaborates:
“SaaS companies that are building their platform often secure their new software by installing numerous scattered tools.
This can generate a lot of noise for the developers and throw up a myriad of disparate false positives, which require attention, but pose no real threat. This causes a huge burden on the staff managing platform security.
The problem is only exacerbated by growth — which can happen quickly in SaaS — creating huge headaches for the staff responsible for security.”
According to the firm, they’ve saved over 1,500 developer working days to date that would otherwise be spent on false positives.
Delbare further shared:
“Throughout my career, I have built multiple SaaS startups and wasted hundreds of hours piecing together a patchwork of tools needed to secure a new platform. In starting Aikido, I saw a better way to identify critical breaches whilst downgrading the distracting ‘non-issues’ that waste an engineer’s time.
“We are the only company in Europe doing this, demonstrating a renewed energy for startups in the continent.”
Aikido counts CertifID, Lighthouse, Zus Health, Henchman, Secure Code Warrior, and Oliva Health amongst its client base and says it has seen over 1,000 total installs in just one year — a somewhat rarity in the world of new SaaS solutions.
The company’s €5 million Seed round was co-led by Notion Capital and Connect Ventures and saw the participation of Inovia Capital’s Precede Fund and angel investor Christina Cacioppo, CEO of Vanta.
Lead image: The Aikido Security team. Photo: Uncredited.
