Developers have a problem. It used to be that only large enterprises needed to worry about security, but today, any startup can hold massive amounts of customer data. This means that developers in all sectors have to worry about how secure their platform is, and often face complex tools to manage security.
Now, Aikido, a small startup in Ghent, Belgium, believes it has an answer to this dilemma: A foolproof, open source, developer-oriented security platform. And the startup just raised a $17 million seed round to further develop its product.
“Security tools have been around for three decades, but I think we’re the first where the buyer is the user. With other tools, the CSO is the buyer, but then some poor developer is the user. We are the ‘no BS’ platform,” Aikido founder and CTO Willem Delbare told TechCrunch.
He has a point.
Aikido’s main competitors tend to make tools aimed at larger businesses than the people who actually need to develop the tools. Business platform Snyk, for example, used to look like Aikido, but not long ago it turned to larger companies. Other competitors include JIT, which serves small to medium-sized customers. In the mid-market, you have Endor Labs and Guardrails, and then you have larger companies like Mend, Qwiet, Oxeye, Ox, Arnica, and Apiiro.
Delbare told me that Aikido’s main differentiators are that it has a freemium model and that it actively opens up new products. “This makes us flexible, fast and affordable,” he said.
The company also offers all-in-one security, fixed pricing and far fewer notifications. “We only bother developers when something ‘real’ goes wrong. We aggressively select alerts to reduce noise and false positives,” he said.
That logic seems to have worked quite well: The company already has 3,000 small to mid-sized customers. And this Series A, led by European venture capital firm Singular, comes less than six months after the company raised a $5 million seed round. The company has now raised a total of $22.5 million.
Another aspect that sets Aikido apart is that it is based in Ghent. Tthe security industry is dominated by Israeli and US establishment actors, and their veterans (the security industry’s version of the “PayPal Mafia” is called “the Checkpoint Mafia“).
Delbare said there’s a certain “playbook” that U.S. or Israeli security startups follow: “They use a very technically advanced security feature, get really good at it, raise a ton of cash, and then two years later, purchased by Palo Alto Networks or Cisco. And then they just repeat that book over and over again.”
He pointed out that Aikido does not follow this pattern. “We don’t play those kinds of games. We are not a unique feature. If we are ever bought, it will only be for our customer base and revenue. Not for a platform that fixes a feature gap,” he said.
“These tools basically look like the inside of the cockpit of an F-16. They make you feel stupid. A developer just wants to fix problems and move on to making fun features, right?” Delbarre explained.
Delbare said Aikido decided to go with Singular after meeting his partner, Henri Tilloy. “I think he’s the first VC I’ve talked to in a long time who really understands the product. Most VCs look at your company and just see a spreadsheet,” he said.
For his part, Tilloy said in a statement: “Aikido has an incredibly realistic and unique approach to safety. It is simple, easy to set up and use for developers. However, it ticks the boxes of compliance and security requirements in one go.”
Also on the team are co-founders Roeland Delrue (CRO and COO) and Felix Garriau (CMO). The company has offended Madeline Lawrence, who left her role as a partner at Peak VC to join the startup as its chief brand officer. He told me: “Willem and I go back years. He was a fundraiser and frequent angel co-investor. We got close because Willem is someone who “tells it like it is”. This same attitude defines Aikido: safety that gets to the point. It gives this team a cutting edge in an established tight industry – I like cutting edge.”
Notion Capital and Connect Ventures, both of which led the previous round, also participated in the round.
Aikido faces a large market. The network security software market is expected to increase from $24.21 billion in 2023 to $27.33 billion in 2024.
At the same time, security risks are mutating and growing rapidly, with the average cost of a data breach reaching record highs $4.45 million in 2023, according to UpGuard.
