Announcement: Hadrian raises €2.5 million pre-seed

November 16, 2021

 Hadrian, a London and Amsterdam based cybersecurity startup raised a €2.5M pre-seed round to build the world’s first autonomous offensive security solution. The round was led by San Francisco-based Village Global and Amsterdam-based Slimmer AI, along with a group of international angel investors and experts including Alex Weiss, managing partner of US-based cybersecurity fund ClearSky; Manuel Stotz, founder of UK-based Kingsway Capital; Riva-Melissa Tez, US-based AI venture investor; Chris Vogelzang, former CEO Danske Bank; specialist cyber security investors Grace Cassy and Jonathan Luff from CyLon; and Alexander Ribbink, general partner at Keen Venture Partners.

Cybercrime damages for 2020 are estimated to reach $1 trillion. “We simply do not have enough experts in the world to keep the criminals out” says co-founder Rogier Fischer. With co-founder Olivier Beg, they earned substantial white-hat hacking bounties from companies like PayPal, Yahoo, and major banks before they turned 14. Aged 17, Rogier co-founded LiteBit, a leading crypto trading platform, where he experienced first-hand the need for absolutely stellar cybersecurity defences.

Rogier and Olivier have teamed up with fellow co-founders Tijl van Vliet, an experienced cloud architect, and Maurice Clin, an experienced entrepreneur, to launch Hadrian, addressing a pressing need in the market. “By building a truly autonomous offensive security solution we can help companies defend themselves. Cybercriminals are using AI, and defending against AI requires state-of-the-art cloud-based technologies which autonomously develop and test new attack vectors”, concludes Rogier. In October, Hadrian started working with 4 launch customers in the technology, financial, pharmaceutical and press sectors.

JC Heyneke, CEO Slimmer AI: “Cybersecurity is a huge challenge with impact on all of society. Traditional technology approaches are not keeping pace—the only way to do so is through more autonomous solutions using machine learning. The Hadrian founders have the vision, drive, and experience to transform this industry.”

About Village Global

VillageGlobal is an early-stage Venture Firm backed by successful entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Diane Green and Anne Wojcicki. For more information go to Village Global.

About Slimmer AI

Slimmer AI is an AI B2B venture studio. We believe in the power of AI to power people’s work. We build, invest in, and support new B2B software ventures that apply AI to disrupt industries. For more information go to Slimmer AI.