Security isn’t 1,826 problems. It’s one. And Aikido is the answer.

“F*ck the quadrant.” Rarely do you see such a bold vision presented to VCs. But bold is what Aikido Security is about. Three years ago, Willem Delbare, Roeland Delrue and Felix Garriau set out to destroy the 1,826 Gartner Magic Quadrants that divvy up security software into artificial sub-categories. And now, they are well on their way to fulfil that mission, announcing its $60M Series B at a $1 billion valuation led by DSTGlobal, with participation from PSG Equity and launching Aikido Infinite, the first step toward autonomous, self-securing software that protects itself as it is built and deployed. After leading Aikido’s Seed and Series A rounds, we at Notion Capital are delighted to double down on the company and invest in their Series B.

What’s wrong with cybersecurity software today?

While mission-critical for every business, security has been chopped up into thousands of narrow point solutions and endless acronyms: CSPM, SCA, SAST, DAST, CNAPP, and so on… Meanwhile, the end goal of security software - protecting the organisation - is not well served by this alphabet soup. Security professionals and developers are often left tearing their hair out as they manage all the tools and are numb to the millions of meaningless alerts these systems generate. While cybersecurity attacks are increasing in frequency and sophistication, especially with the rise of AI-enabled attacks, only 14% of organisations feel prepared for cyberattacks.

The problem isn’t point solutions themselves.The problem is weak ones, built without an understanding of how modern software is actually written, deployed, and run. Many tools are overengineered for narrow use cases, hard to use in practice, and disconnected from the real systems they are meant to protect. The result is complexity, operational overhead, and a false sense of… security.

The future is a unified platform driven by context - and ultimately self-securing software

Aikido believes security starts with great products in each category. Aikido has built category-leading solutions across application security, from SAST and SCA to runtime protection, cloud security, and AI penetration testing. Each capability is designed to stand on its own and outperform legacy tools that were built for a different era.

What makes this even stronger is context. By connecting code, cloud, and runtime environments, Aikido’s world-class platform delivers more accurate findings, fewer false positives, and faster fixes than tools that operate in isolation. Security is one problem. And it demands one solution. They envision security as a single, unified system anchored in engineering, with end-to-end visibility
across all surfaces, categories, and stages of software.

This approach is meeting with deep product market fit in the market with 80% cross platform adoption. And the next step is Aikido Infinite, which offers continuous autonomous penetration testing that reduces risk at every software release. With this offering, Aikido is advancing towards a future of self-securing software that protects itself as it is built and deployed, so teams don't have to choose between speed and security.

Aikido has another unique aspect of its vision for security: disrupting the market from below. Most security vendors immediately focus on winning enterprise clients, neglecting customers in the SMB and mid-market segments. This presents an opportunity for disruptors like Aikido. Aikido’s security as engineering approach delivers accessible, dev-first UX, and excellent price-to-value well-suited to capture these underserved segments. Aikido has spread like wildfire in the mass market with excellent GTM efficiency and hundreds of thousands of very happy users. For many organisations, Aikido is the only security solution they will ever need. And increasingly, enterprise clients are getting the picture too: Aikido is winning 6 figure plus deals with the likes of Revolut, Visma and the Premier League.

The strategy is working and Aikido’s growth is accelerating.

We have seen exceptional execution to buildout a comprehensive platform that covers the whole gamut of security with best-in-class engineering quality, developer empathy, and an AI-first mentality. Through its rapid growth, the company has maintained a customer-first ethos that garners rave reviews from the (usually cynical) security professional crowd. The “disrupt from below” approach is flying as the SMB and mid-market gobbles up a world’s first security solution that works for them. And this translates into exceptional GTM and burn efficiency for the company, setting records for net new ARR added every week.

In the context of rising security risks, we believe there is endless potential to transform the security market from an alphabet soup to a unified platform that actually serves developers and protects organisations – with Aikido leading the way.

Since the days when we led the seed round and Series A, we have been blown away by Aikido’s sweeping vision and best-in-class execution. So we could not be happier to double down on the company in the Series B and support the next phase of growth.

Congratulations to Aikido, one of the world’s fastest cyber security unicorns! Onwards!

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