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Kevin Mandia has launched a new cybersecurity company, Armadin, with $189.9 million in combined seed and Series A funding. The company announced the financing on March 10 and described it as a record combined raise for an early-stage cybersecurity startup. Armadin plans to build autonomous AI agents that identify exploitable risks and help companies respond faster to cyber threats.
Mandia founded Mandiant in 2004 and sold the company to Google for $5.4 billion in 2022. Armadin marks his return to cybersecurity at a time when attack methods are becoming faster and more automated. The startup says it is building for a market shaped by agentic AI and machine-speed cyberattacks.
Accel led the funding round, while GV, Kleiner Perkins, Menlo Ventures, In-Q-Tel, 8VC, and Ballistic Ventures also joined. Armadin did not disclose its valuation. The financing gives the startup a strong position at launch and signals major investor interest in AI-native cybersecurity.
Armadin says its platform will focus on autonomous security operations and continuous offensive testing from an attacker’s perspective. The company wants to help enterprises uncover exploitable risks before malicious actors can use them. Its launch message centers on speed, scale, and constant security evaluation.
Investor support also reflects rising interest in AI-focused security platforms across the industry. Companies now face increasing pressure to defend networks against more adaptive attacks. Armadin says manual reviews and periodic checks no longer match the pace of modern threats. Its platform aims to automate more of the work security teams have historically handled by hand.
Mandia warned that artificial intelligence will reshape cybersecurity more quickly than many previous technology shifts. In Armadin’s launch post, he said the industry has entered a period where capable threat actors can automate and scale attacks more effectively. He argued future intrusions will become more persistent, more adaptive, and less limited by human speed.
He made a similar point in remarks tied to the company’s launch. “I wasn’t going to sit on the sidelines watching another shift change in cybersecurity without leveraging 30 years in the industry to do something,” Mandia said. He also said Armadin uses agentic tools to complete work in minutes that used to take days.
Armadin’s message focuses on giving defenders their own automated capabilities as offensive tools improve. Mandia has said AI on offense will create systems that can think, learn, and adapt. He warned that attackers could complete operations in minutes that once required days. Armadin wants security teams to counter that shift with automated agents built for defense.
Armadin’s co-founders are Travis Lanham, Evan Peña, and David Slater. Each brings experience from Mandiant, Google Cloud Security, or Google SecOps. The company says it combines offensive security expertise with AI-native engineering to automate red-team style work across the attacker lifecycle.
Mandia said Armadin was founded in September and has hired more than 60 employees in the past six months. He also said the company has already started working with Fortune 100 customers. Early hiring and customer activity indicate Armadin entered the market with an operating business rather than a research concept.
Armadin’s launch also arrives as security leaders and government agencies warn that AI is lowering the barrier for sophisticated cyberattacks. The company’s position is that defenders will need their own automated systems to keep pace with AI-enabled adversaries. With nearly $190 million in fresh capital, Mandia is building Armadin around that view from the outset.
