Aikido successfully raises $17 million for its cybersecurity platform

Aikido, a small company from Ghent, says it has found the answer for data security of large and small companies: an open source platform aimed at developers. The startup successfully closed a Series A funding round, ultimately raising $17 million to continue developing its product.

Willem Delbare, founder and technical director of Aikido, tells TechCrunch: “Security tools have been around for thirty years, but I think we are the first where the buyer is the user. With other tools, the CSO is the buyer, but it is the poor developer who is the user.”

What really sets the Belgian company apart from its overseas competitors is that it has a freemium platform and that it actively makes all new products open source.

The company also takes a less intrusive approach by limiting the number of notifications and only disturbing developers when there is a real problem. This logic seems to work well for the company, which today already has 3,000 small and medium-sized businesses as customers. In addition to the Series A capital round, Aikido was also able to raise 5 million euros in a seed round. The Belgian start-up has raised a total of $22.5 million.

According to Mr. Delbare, the American and Israeli start-ups from the security sector work with a certain “scenario”: “They develop a technically very advanced security system, they become very efficient in that domain, raise a ton of funding, and two years later they bought by Palo Alto Networks or Cisco. Then they repeat the same scenario endlessly.” Mr. However, Delbare says Aikido will not follow this model.

Aikido addresses a crucial market. The network security software market should exceed $24.21 billion by 2023 and $27.33 billion by 2024.

At the same time, security risks are evolving and increasing rapidly, with the average cost of a data breach reaching a record $4.45 million by 2023, according to UpGuard.