XBOW, a Seattle startup, just pulled in a huge $120 million Series C round led by DFJ Growth and Northzone. With that cash, they have passed the $1 billion valuation mark and landed unicorn status.
The timing makes sense because enterprise security teams are fighting an uphill battle. Generative AI lets attackers throw out complex, nonstop attacks without breaking a sweat or spending a dime. Old-school point-in-time pen testing just can’t keep up.
XBOW’s answer? An “autonomous hacker”, their AI platform finds, moves through and actually exploits security holes faster than any human crew ever could. That’s not just an upgrade; it’s a whole new way to fight back.
The Architect of Autonomy
XBOW is worth over a billion dollars because of its background. The company started in early 2024. Oege de Moor founded it. He is the computer scientist who made GitHub Copilot and GitHub Advanced Security.
De Moor and his team used AI to improve security work. Normal scanners only show possible problems, and they often give many wrong alerts. XBOW’s tools act like attackers by testing many steps. By testing, they could find weak APIs, raise permissions, and run code from far away. This shows security teams the real ways to break in.
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Validated in the Wild
XBOW isn’t just another idea floating around; it’s already making a difference in ethical hacking circles. Back in late 2025, it climbed to the top of the HackerOne leaderboard in the U.S., beating thousands of top human researchers. De Moor, the founder, said this during the funding announcement: “When I founded XBOW, few believed AI could truly think like a hacker and operate at machine speed. We proved it.”
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What really sets XBOW apart is how it works safely in live production environments. That’s a big deal, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. More than 100 companies, including major ones like Moderna and Samsung Electronics, already use XBOW. By plugging right into CI/CD pipelines, XBOW lets them check their code for vulnerabilities as they write it. They don’t have to sit around for those slow, once-a-year manual audits anymore.
Scaling for Global Defense
With this $120 million in fresh funding, the company’s already making moves in the Asia-Pacific, kicking things off by bringing in WonLae Lee as the new General Manager for South Korea. The hire is all about strengthening ties with Samsung SDS, and making clear that they’re serious about the region.
Ramin Sayar, who you might know from his days leading Sumo Logic or as a venture partner at DFJ Growth, is joining XBOW’s Board of Directors. That’s a big deal, considering his track record with enterprise SaaS. He’s there to help steer the ship as XBOW gets ready to double its workforce to 300 by the end of 2026.
The cybersecurity world is changing fast, shifting from assistive AI tools to fully autonomous agents. XBOW wants to set the bar for offensive security. Hackers never take a break, and with XBOW, defenders don’t have to, either.
