Cybersecurity startup Horizon3 has raised a $250 million Collection E at a $2 billion valuation, greater than tripling its valuation in 14 months. The San Francisco-based agency drew backing from returning traders NightDragon and NEA.
The funding arrives as two major AI research labs disclosed final week that their fashions had breached programs outdoors their meant scope. Horizon3, which has spent six years constructing AI particularly designed to probe networks for vulnerabilities in a managed, approved method, is using rising enterprise demand. With AI-driven attacks accelerating, enterprises are speeding to stress-test their defenses at scale, a spot that conventional safety distributors have largely left unfilled.
Matt Hartley, the corporate’s chief income officer, mentioned that its NodeZero platform has two core strengths: It might probably take a look at stay programs with out shutting down operations, a functionality different AI-powered instruments have struggled to ship reliably, and it scans a whole infrastructure constantly slightly than annually, analyzing the total community slightly than simply 2-3%.
The corporate approached $100 million in annual recurring income final 12 months with 120% year-over-year progress,and expects to speed up progress this 12 months, Hartley mentioned.
AI instruments have made it simpler for attackers to develop new exploits rapidly, forcing safety groups to deal with threats quicker than they will repair them. Horizon3 spent roughly $100 million in R&D constructing automated programs designed to remain predictable and controllable, Hartley mentioned. That’s important given current breaches at AI labs, which raised questions on whether or not any AI system can actually stay contained.
“It’s additionally making individuals much more cautious about how they deploy AI,” Hartley mentioned. “We’re getting loads of questions right now round: are you able to detect AI? In fact we will. However I believe loads of organizations that rushed to deploy AI throughout the enterprise at the moment are pondering twice concerning the ramifications of these deployments; what if my very own safety workforce will get too aggressive, may there be unintended penalties? So loads of organizations are transferring into what I’d name a daring new world, which is precisely why you want constant, predictable testing from an organization like Horizon3, to know easy methods to strengthen your individual defenses in opposition to real-world exploits.”
In a press release, Horizon3 has run 310,000 manufacturing safety exams with zero disruptions, establishing what it calls ‘AI Hackers’, absolutely autonomous penetration testing.
The true competitors isn’t different software program distributors; it’s the prevailing mannequin, in accordance with Hartley. Most firms rent human safety corporations to run annual exams and people gained’t disappear, he continued. What’s shifting is what purchasers demand after signing up: As a substitute of sampling 5% of infrastructure as soon as yearly, they now wish to scan all the things month-to-month or weekly, monitoring whether or not they’re truly getting safer.
Horizon3’s founders, Snehal Antani and Anthony Pelletier, met whereas serving at Joint Particular Operations Command, the place they noticed firsthand how useful resource constraints made steady safety testing troublesome. They based Horizon3 to automate these repetitive assessments.
With the funding, Horizon3 is increasing internationally,together with new places of work in Amsterdam (in June 2026), Australia, and Singapore, whereas constructing a associate community and sustaining substantial R&D spending.
Strategic traders now embrace Singapore’s EDBI, protection contractor SAIC, and Qualcomm, signaling that the vulnerability they’re addressing extends properly past any single sector.
Horizon3 has roughly 7,200 to 7,300 prospects, starting from managed service suppliers serving small companies to Fortune 10 enterprises. The corporate claims an addressable market of tens of billions of {dollars}, a determine that aligns with business estimates of the broader cybersecurity market, valued at $271.9 billion in 2025 and projected to achieve $663.2 billion by 2033, in accordance with Grand View Research.
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