Mandos Brief
Nov 2, 20266 min read
Mandos Brief #8: AppSec is moving inside the coding agent
Cognition, maker of the Devin coding agent, bought Corridor seven months after its $25M Series A, in a week when Upwind's $400M led $619M of cyber funding.
Nika (Nikoloz) Kokhreidze
Independent cybersecurity market analyst. 14 years of enterprise security leadership. Founder of Mandos Cyber and CybersecTools.
77 insights
Analysis
Oct 28, 20267 min read
Build the Brain, Then Buy the Blame: Why Frontier AI Labs Will Enter Cybersecurity
Frontier labs already sell cyber models. What stops them from selling security is blame, and that barrier is starting to crack.
Mandos Brief
Oct 26, 20267 min read
Mandos Brief #7: The money went to the machines, not the people
$209M of this week's $234M in cyber funding went to products that run or control bots and AI agents, while the two phishing-training companies that changed hands went for undisclosed prices.
Mandos Brief
Oct 19, 20267 min read
Mandos Brief #6: $6.3B says AI security is access control
Proofpoint is paying 8.4 times revenue for Varonis, while the 173 agent-security companies on the Mandos platform have raised only $4.05B between them.
Mandos Brief
Oct 12, 20266 min read
Mandos Brief #5: Europe's AI offense runs on small checks
Thirty European offensive security companies on the Mandos platform have raised $94M between them. The 48 North American ones have raised $2.29B.
Mandos Brief
Oct 5, 20266 min read
Mandos Brief #4: Offense is the AI security bet startups can own
Armadin raised $255.5M seven months out of stealth, more than double what six agent-security startups raised between them this week.
Mandos Brief
Sep 28, 20266 min read
Mandos Brief #3: $800M says agent security belongs to the platforms
$800M of the week's $820M went to Island and Cyera, two platforms that were not agent-security companies a year ago; the startups that were got bought.
Analysis
Sep 25, 202610 min read
Cybersecurity Startup GTM: The Strategy That Fits How Security Buyers Actually Buy
Most cybersecurity startup GTM plans are horizontal SaaS plans with the word security pasted over them. Security buyers are not trying to win, they are trying not to lose, and that single inversion breaks most of the playbook.
Mandos Brief
Sep 21, 20266 min read
Mandos Brief #2: The week's biggest checks skipped the CISO
Exein's $270M is 55% of the week's $491M, and its buyer is a device maker, not a security team.
What moved in cybersecurity this week, and why it matters.
The Mandos Brief. Independent market intelligence, every Monday.