We’ve Raised $43M from a16z & the OpenAI Startup Fund to Protect the World from AI-Powered Cyberattacks

I’m thrilled to announce our $43 million investment round, led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and the OpenAI Startup Fund—marking OpenAI’s first-ever investment in a cybersecurity company. Additional participating investors include Abstract Ventures, Eniac Ventures, CrossBeam Ventures, and K5, along with executives from Google, Workday, Shopify, Plaid, Paxos and more. Our mission is to protect people from AI-powered cyberattacks. With these funds, we will focus on growing our research and development team to counter this growing threat.

We’re growing fast! Since our public launch in January, we have reached over a hundred enterprise customers including a diverse set of leading brands like First State Bank, Podium, the Dallas Mavericks, and BMC. We are hiring across our business so if you are interested in protecting people from the next generation of cyber attacks, please visit our jobs page.

AI Social Engineering is the #1 Security Threat to Business. And It’s Only Getting Smarter.

Social engineering is already the leading cause of security breaches. Now, AI is increasing the efficacy and blast radius of these attacks.

Attackers can generate realistic AI personas—deepfake versions of your coworkers, your CEO, even you—in seconds. These personas can make phone calls, send emails, or text your team using AI-generated content that sounds exactly right. They're built on top of open-source LLMs, trained on public databases, and fine-tuned to fool your defenses.

These agents don’t sleep. They don’t need training. And they can be spun up by the thousands with just a few clicks. They’ll attack not just one target, but every target, simultaneously. And once they find a way in, they can work towards highly credentialed individuals to maximum impact.

Their goals? Steal money. Disrupt critical systems. Lock down infrastructure with ransomware. Capture trade secrets. Attack adversaries. We’re no longer facing occasional phishing attempts or isolated social engineering scams. This is industrialized deception—AI used as a weapon of mass manipulation.

As mentioned in my blog post this past January, AI-powered social engineering has already led to a major foreign policy issue, close calls at cyber software providers and successful attacks with tremendous financial losses - and that’s just what has been publicly reported. Behind the scenes, CISOs are seeing huge growth in the volume, sophistication and efficacy of AI-Powered attacks. In a recent study of over a hundred CISOs, they ranked AI-Powered social engineering as their #1 concern.

The Good News: AI Fights Back, Too

Thankfully, the magic of generative AI can also be used to fight back against this new threat. With the right models and data, we can simulate realistic ai attacks, train employees to recognize threats, triage suspicious behavior in real time, and surface risk before it turns into loss.

That’s what we’re building at Adaptive Security.

At Adaptive, we combine AI-powered deepfake attack simulations, real-time threat triage, next generation security training, and AI-driven risk scoring into one platform that helps you outsmart attackers—before they strike.

Deepfake persona simulations

We simulate real-world attacks using AI-generated personas across voice, SMS, and email. These aren’t just fake messages—they’re live, adaptive, and shockingly realistic. When an employee receives a call from “the controller” asking for a wire transfer, it feels real. But it’s a test. If they fall for it, our system flags the risk instantly and delivers personalized training on the spot.

AI-powered security awareness training

We deliver smart, engaging training that adapts to the employee—not the other way around. Every module is mobile-friendly, expert-vetted, and designed to actually get used. Our average training rating is 4.8 out of 5 stars because people learn best when the content feels relevant and real.

Real-time threat triage

When someone reports a suspicious message, our AI doesn’t just forward it to IT—it analyzes the message in real time, scores the risk, and helps security teams act fast. This gives your SOC visibility into emerging threats as they happen, across every communication channel.

GenAI-powered content creation

Need custom training? Compliance modules? Internal security messaging? Our generative AI tools let you create tailored content in seconds—text, visuals, even video—based on any topic or internal policy. You can train your team on the newest threats before attackers exploit them.

AI-driven risk scoring

Every click, call, or report feeds into a continuously updated risk model. Security teams can see risk at the individual, team, and organizational level—giving them a real-time map of where they're most vulnerable and how to get ahead of it.

Want to learn more? You can talk to a real-time deepfake persona of me, and ask me anything about our products, plans—or my favorite music. Visit us at AdaptiveSecurity.com.