Armadin raised $255.5M this week at a $2.5B valuation, seven months after it came out of stealth. It builds AI agents that attack your network before someone else does. Six startups that defend AI agents also raised this week, and they split $116M between them. In the same week REDLattice agreed to list on Nasdaq at $1.25B, and two former IBM X-Force Red leaders raised a $7M pre-seed for an offensive operations platform. Last week I said agent security belongs to the platforms, because they own the browser, the data and the identity. Offense needs none of those. My read: it's the one AI security bet a startup can still own, and investors have noticed.
The week in numbers
- Deals in the window: 16 (11 funding, 4 M&A, 1 SPAC listing). 41 radar items filtered out as old news, duplicates or outside the week; the web sweep added 14 deals the radar had not caught yet.
- Disclosed funding: about $430M across 11 rounds. Armadin is about 60% of it.
- Largest round: Armadin, $255.5M Series B at $2.5B, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel
- Acquisitions: 4, one with a price: Quantum eMotion's C$33.8M offer for Plurilock. REDLattice's $1.25B SPAC merger is the listing.
- Only on the radar: 36 homepage repositionings caught in the window. Six put agents in the headline, two took them out.
The chart counts what the radar caught on its own, by the date the deal happened, with re-reported old deals removed. Detection lags by up to three weeks, so the last point always grows. By Sunday the radar had two of this week's 16, and my own sweep found the rest. Every deal with amounts and sources is on the Mandos platform.
Deals that matter
Armadin, $255.5M Series B at a $2.5B valuation, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel. $445M raised in total. 1 October.