Octane Secures $6.75 Million for AI-Powered Cybersecurity Solution for Blockchain

AI cybersecurity startup Octane has emerged from stealth and announced it secured $6.75 million in a seed funding round.

Octane will use the funding to accelerate the development of its platform that uses machine learning to continuously analyze blockchain codebases, identify vulnerabilities and remediate them before they can be exploited, the company said in a Tuesday (April 8) press release.

“Flawed blockchain code enables billions in theft across crypto, with vulnerable smart contracts creating an ever-expanding attack surface as more value enters the ecosystem,” Octane CEO Giovanni Vignone said in the release.

Octane’s platform helps developers catch bugs before deployment and throughout the software development cycle, according to the release. It will soon offer code analysis for off-chain codebases as well.

The company’s seed funding round was co-led by Archetype and Winklevoss Capital, per the release.

“Securing smart contracts on the blockchain is one of the biggest challenges facing any crypto developer,” Tyler Winklevoss said in the release. “Octane allows devs to battle-test their smart contract code with AI-powered security testing before it hits production on the blockchain. This is huge for devs, companies and mainstream crypto adoption.”

A growing share of chief operating officers at organizations that generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue have implemented AI-powered automated cybersecurity management systems, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report, “COOs Leverage GenAI to Reduce Data Security Losses.”

The report found that the share of these COOs who said their companies have implemented these systems leapt from about 17% in May to 55% in August.

This growth has been driven by COOs’ demand for GenAI-driven solutions to improve cybersecurity management at a time when companies face the threat of cyberattacks that are growing more sophisticated, according to the report.

Dream, a company focused on AI-powered cybersecurity for nations and critical infrastructure, said in February that it raised $100 million in a Series B funding round to expand into additional markets in which cyber threats pose challenges to national security.

In September, Torq raised $70 million in a Series C funding round to expand its AI-first cybersecurity hyperautomation solutions that automate, manage and monitor critical security operations center (SOC) responses.