XBOW raises $120M, crosses $1B valuation
Seattle-based cybersecurity startup XBOW has raised $120 million in a Series C funding round, pushing its valuation beyond $1 billion and making it one of the sector’s newest unicorns. The round was led by DFJ Growth and Northzone, with new participation from Sofina and Alkeon Capital, alongside existing backers Altimeter, NFDG Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.
The company said the capital will be used to accelerate product development, expand enterprise adoption, and support international growth.
Why continuous testing is gaining urgency
XBOW is betting that traditional security assessments are struggling to keep up with two forces reshaping the threat landscape: AI-powered attacks and faster software release cycles. Attackers can now use AI to probe systems continuously across many targets, while development teams ship updates frequently enough that point-in-time penetration tests can become outdated quickly.
In response, the startup is positioning its platform as autonomous offensive security—a model designed to test continuously and adapt to changing attack surfaces rather than relying solely on scheduled pentests.
Oege de Moor and a team built around offensive expertise
XBOW was founded by Oege de Moor, known for his work on GitHub Copilot and GitHub Advanced Security. The company says it combines AI-driven reasoning with adversarial workflows modeled on real-world attack techniques, aiming to identify and validate vulnerabilities at machine speed while keeping false positives low.
Nico Waisman, formerly CISO at Lyft, helped shape the company’s approach to safe deployment and the integration of elite human hackers to train and guide the system.
Board and leadership additions
As part of the financing, Ramin Sayar, venture partner at DFJ Growth and former CEO of Sumo Logic, will join the board. The company also added Ron Gabrisko to the board and appointed Jonaki Egenolf as CMO, Dean Breda as general counsel, and Niro Rajadurai as CRO. Earlier in 2026, WonLae Lee was named general manager for South Korea, signaling a focus on international expansion.
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