Welcome to The Trident Radar!
The second full week of the year, and the world seems to be on a bit of a knifes edge.
One thing that hasn’t changed is that our market continues to build each week, with tons of early stage companies all planning out their year with early moves.
Cyber seems untouchable… or does it? (see this weeks Insider Insight).
Lets dive in.
This weeks Trident Talks!
In this episode of Trident Talks, Rosie Larter sits down with Oded Breiner, Co-Founder and CTO of Brinker, to explore how AI is changing the game in disinformation, narrative intelligence and deepfake analysis.
Oded’s been building for 20+ years - from enterprise tech to AI startups pre-LLMs - and now he’s applying that experience to one of the biggest modern challenges: large-scale influence operations.
Funding momentum continues across early and growth-stage cyber, with multiple seed rounds closing despite lack of macro noise.
Red teaming is back on the menu boys! (and girls)
Buyers are still spending, but increasingly outside government.
The private sector is quietly absorbing responsibility as federal cyber capacity contracts.
Insider Insight: The US cyber pullback and what it means for vendors
Company Spotlight: Novee
FUNDING SPOTLIGHT
Armadin – Early Stage VC – $165.2M
Armadin raised a huge early-stage round to scale its AI-powered vulnerability detection and verification platform. By applying automated red teaming from an attacker’s perspective, the company helps organizations identify which vulnerabilities are actually exploitable, not just theoretically present.
Category: AI Red Teaming / Vulnerability Validation
HQ: Menlo Park, CA
Horizon3.ai – Series D – $100M – Led by NEA
Horizon3.ai closed a $100M Series D to expand its autonomous penetration testing platform and deepen its push into federal markets. The platform performs production-safe pentesting across internal, external, cloud, and hybrid environments without agents or consultants.
Category: Autonomous Pentesting / Offensive Security
HQ: Dover, DE
Aikido Security – Series B – €58.7M – Led by DST Global
Aikido raised a large Series B to simplify application, container, and cloud security for developers. The platform focuses on reducing false positives and helping teams fix the most critical issues quickly, rather than overwhelming them with alerts.
Category: Developer Security / AppSec
HQ: Ghent, Belgium
WitnessAI – Early Stage VC – $58M – Led by Sound Ventures
WitnessAI secured $58M to accelerate go-to-market and expand its AI governance platform. The company provides visibility, control, and security for enterprise AI usage, addressing one of the fastest-growing risk surfaces inside organizations.
Category: AI Security & Governance
HQ: Mountain View, CA
Novee – Series A – $51.5M – Led by YL Ventures, Canaan, Zeev
Novee raised a strong Series A to scale its AI-driven continuous penetration testing platform. By simulating real attacker behavior, the platform identifies true exploit chains and provides actionable remediation faster than traditional scanners.
Category: Continuous Pentesting / AI Offense
HQ: Tel Aviv, Israel
DepthFirst – Series A – $40M – Led by Accel
DepthFirst closed a $40M Series A to build a unified security intelligence layer across software and infrastructure. The platform combines applied AI models with guided remediation workflows to help teams prioritize real risk.
Category: Security Intelligence / Exposure Management
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Project Eleven – Series A – $20M – Led by Castle Island Management
Project Eleven raised $20M to expand its work in post-quantum cryptography and quantum-resilient security tooling. The company focuses on helping enterprises and blockchain ecosystems prepare for future quantum threats.
Category: Post-Quantum Security / Cryptography
HQ: New York, NY
Zepo Intelligence – Seed – $15M – Led by eCAPITAL
Zepo raised seed funding to scale its human risk and social engineering defense platform. As AI-driven phishing and manipulation accelerate, Zepo combines detection, training, and behavioral analytics into a single system.
Category: Human Risk / Social Engineering Defense
HQ: Coruña, Spain
Zeroport – Seed – $10M – Led by lool ventures
Zeroport secured seed funding to expand its hardware-based network access security products. The company focuses on eliminating attack surfaces through isolation-first remote connectivity, particularly for BYOD and critical environments.
Category: Hardware Security / Secure Remote Access
HQ: Herzliya, Israel
NNEAT – Early Stage VC – €800K
NNEAT raised early funding to develop its cyber exposure analytics platform for mid-sized enterprises and MSSPs. The platform maps real-world adversary tactics against defenses to provide a unified readiness score and prioritized actions.
Category: Exposure Management / Cyber Analytics
HQ: Bilbao, Spain
Proof of Act – Angel – $20K
Proof of Act raised a small angel round to support early development of its developer-focused security and compliance tooling, offering monitoring, logging, authorization, and policy enforcement.
Category: Developer Security / Authorization
HQ: New York, NY
M&A INTELLIGENCE
Seraphic → Reached a definitive agreement to be Acquired by CrowdStrike
Deal Type: Merger / Acquisition
Deal Date: January 13, 2026
Deal Size: Undisclosed
CrowdStrike reached a definitive agreement to acquire Seraphic, an enterprise browser security platform focused on monitoring, governance, and policy enforcement at the browser layer.
Build38 → Reached a definitive agreement to be Acquired by OneSpan
Deal Type: Merger / Acquisition
Deal Date: January 12, 2026
Deal Size: Undisclosed
OneSpan announced its acquisition of Build38, a mobile application protection company specialising in in-app shielding and AI-driven threat detection.
Cycuity → Acquired by Arteris
Deal Type: Merger / Acquisition
Deal Date: January 14, 2026
Deal Size: Undisclosed
Arteris acquired Cycuity, a hardware security verification company focused on chip-level protection for semiconductors used in medical devices, automotive, aerospace, and critical systems.
INSIDER INSIGHT
The US Cyber Drawdown: A Quiet but Dangerous Shift
While private cybersecurity markets remain active and well-funded, the US federal cyber apparatus is being reduced at an unprecedented scale. This isn’t a budget trim or a temporary slowdown it’s a structural retreat that materially changes the global cyber risk landscape.
Here’s what’s happening and why it matter:
CISA is being hollowed out
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has quietly lost a core part of its operational capability.
Since January 2025:
~1,000 employees have exited (over one-third of total staff)
During the October 2025 shutdown, 65% of staff were furloughed, leaving just 889 people operational
40% vacancy rate across critical cyber roles
At the program level, the impact is severe:
Election interference monitoring cancelled
Critical infrastructure attack monitoring cancelled
Penetration testing for local election systems terminated
Software security attestation validation eliminated
$135M cut proposed for FY2026, after an earlier $491M reduction attempt
This isn’t trimming fat it’s removing cyber muscle.
The Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) is gone
The CSRB which is the government’s primary post-incident learning mechanism was disbanded in January 2025. At the time, it was:
Mid-investigation into Salt Typhoon, the Chinese telecom breach
One of the few bodies capable of producing cross-sector, system-level lessons after major incidents
There is no replacement body in place. That means:
No structured post-mortems at national scale
No consistent feedback loop into standards, guidance, or vendor accountability
Lessons learned stay siloed or aren’t learned at all
Information sharing is fractured
The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (2015) expired in October 2025. We covered this. It has been temporarily revived, but:
Expires again on January 30, 2026
Creates ongoing uncertainty for private-sector threat sharing
Weakens legal and operational guarantees around collaboration
Government-to-industry cyber coordination is now unstable, inconsistent, and politically fragile. Other agencies are shrinking too The drawdown isn’t isolated to CISA:
FBI cyber capacity reduced
Intelligence agency cyber roles cut
Federal cyber scholarship programs reduced by 60%+
NIST cyber funding narrowly rescued, but still constrained
This hits the talent pipeline as much as current operations.
Critical infrastructure is increasingly exposed
Federal cyber support for:
hospitals
water utilities
power grids
transport systems
has been drastically reduced.
Small and rural operators are hit hardest. States have been told to “handle it themselves” but many lack:
budget
specialist talent
vendor leverage
incident response depth
This creates uneven national resilience and predictable soft targets.
International cyber cooperation has been dismantled
On January 7, 2026, the US withdrew from 66 international organisations, including:
31 UN bodies
35 non-UN organisations
Many focused on:
cyber norms
hybrid threat coordination
digital resilience
cross-border incident response
This is a major retreat from global cyber leadership at a time when threats are becoming more coordinated, not less.
The Trident Take
The implication is clear: As the public cyber defence layer contracts, risk is being pushed downstream.
Into:
enterprises
cloud providers
critical infrastructure operators
vendors
Private companies are being forced to compensate for the loss of national capability not by choice, but by necessity. This is one reason we’re seeing:
strong funding for offensive validation
growth in autonomous pentesting
demand for proof-based security, not policy-based reassurance
From the outside, this looks less like isolated cuts and more like a systematic erosion of US cyber capability. It’s possible these functions are eventually replaced by new processes or restructured federal bodies, but for now, the gap is real.
COMPANY SPOTLIGHT
Continuous AI Penetration Testing for a World Without Backstops
Website - https://www.novee.security
A very cool announcement last week and one that caught a lot of people unaware. Launching both their Seed & Series A (solidifies their early days in the market) is a big move.
Founded in 2025 and based in Tel Aviv, Novee has developed an AI-driven penetration testing platform that continuously simulates real attacker behavior.
Rather than scanning for vulnerabilities in isolation, Novee:
chains weaknesses together the way attackers do
validates real exploit paths
prioritizes issues based on actual impact
delivers actionable remediation guidance
It replaces periodic, manual pentesting with always-on adversary simulation.
Funding & momentum
On January 14, 2026, Novee raised a $51.5M Series A, this is Novee’s first external funding round, bringing total capital raised to $51.5M which was led by:
YL Ventures
Canaan Partners
Zeev Ventures
Leadership
Ido Geffen — Co-Founder & CEO
Omer Ninburg — Co-Founder & CTO
Gon Chalamish — Co-Founder & CPO
HOT JOBS
VP Engineering
💰 $250K–$300K + bonus + equity
📍 East Coast
AI Threat Intelligence vendor delivering predictive intelligence on threat actor infrastructure.
Contact: [email protected]
Public Sector Account Executive
💰 $300K OTE
📍 Washington, DC
Series A AI-driven GRC platform. First Federal sales hire.
Contact: [email protected]
Enterprise Account Executive (x2)
💰 $300K OTE
📍 West Coast
AI-powered incident response platform.
Contact: [email protected]
Customer Success Manager
💰 $170K–$220K OTE
📍 US (Remote)
Israeli AI-native DLP vendor.
Contact: [email protected]
Account Executive
💰 ~$350K OTE
📍 Chicago / LA / Denver
Cloud security platform transforming enterprise environments.
Contact: [email protected]
AE & BDR Roles
💰 BDR: ~$140K OTE | AE: $200K–$280K OTE
📍 US / Southern States
Secure Remote Access vendor entering next growth phase.
Contact: [email protected]
Head of Sales & Head of Marketing
💰 Sales: $225K–$250K | Marketing: ~$200K + bonus
📍 East Coast
AI Security Operations platform.
Contact: [email protected]
Head of Marketing
💰 $225K + equity + bonuses
📍 East Coast or Central US
AI-for-SOC vendor with strong early traction.
Contact: [email protected]
Enterprise Account Executive (x2)
💰 $320K OTE
📍 East Coast
Exposure Management platform cutting through alert overload.
Contact: [email protected]
Enterprise Account Executive
💰 $320K OTE (50/50) + equity
📍 West Coast or Central
AI-native SOC platform.
Contact: [email protected]
Head of Customer Engineering
💰 £120K
📍 South East UK
All-in-one cyber platform for SMEs and MSPs.
Ready to make your next move? These roles won't stay open long.
📥 INBOX INTEL
Have market intelligence to share? Our network sees deals before they're announced, hiring freezes before they're public, and technology shifts before they hit the headlines.
Send us your tips:
Funding rounds in stealth mode
Executive movements and reorganizations
Customer wins/losses that signal market shifts
Technology partnerships before they're announced
Hiring sprees or freezes at specific companies
Email: [email protected]
All sources protected. We verify before we publish.
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Editor: Ryan Keeley | London