Hadrian Raised $40 Million for Agentic Security Testing
The funding will support international expansion as the firm aims to automate the validation of cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Updated on Oct. 13, 2026 in Cybersecurity
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Hadrian has secured $40 million in a funding round led by Forgepoint Capital International and SmartFin, bringing the company's total capital raised to $65 million. The startup intends to use the investment to scale operations across the U.S. and EMEA and expand its engineering and research teams.
Why it matters
Security teams currently struggle with high volumes of noise, as 70% find it difficult to identify genuinely exploitable risks. By automating penetration testing, the company aims to move beyond manual processes that dominate 87% of organizational security workflows.
Hadrian reports that only 0.47% of standard vulnerability scanner findings are actually exploitable, effectively leaving 99.5% of alerts as actionable noise. Their platform, Atlas, attempts to solve this by mapping external attack surfaces and using AI agents to validate real exploitability.
The players
Hadrian
A cybersecurity startup providing continuous exposure management and agentic penetration testing tools.
Forgepoint Capital International
A venture capital firm focused on investing in cybersecurity and software companies.
SmartFin
A private equity firm that invests in growth-stage technology companies.
The details
The company employs agentic penetration testing, where autonomous software agents perform security assessments that simulate how a human would probe a network for weaknesses. By replacing traditional manual pentesting—a labor-intensive process where security professionals manually test systems for bugs—the firm aims to reduce false positives. Atlas serves as the core engine, which integrates continuous exposure management with these AI agents to filter out non-critical vulnerabilities.
Timeline
Hadrian announced the $40 million funding round on October 13, 2026.
The Tech Race
Hadrian is positioning itself against traditional manual penetration testing firms that currently handle the security audits for 87% of organizations. By scaling its AI-driven validation platform, the company is competing to define the standard for autonomous exposure management.
Security departments currently burdened by manual penetration testing may soon see automated alternatives that claim to speed up resolution times. Adoption remains dependent on the platform's ability to integrate with existing vulnerability management workflows.
The takeaway
Security leaders should evaluate whether automated agentic testing can actually replace the depth of human-led penetration testing in their specific environments. Watch for the company's progress as it aims to build a nine-figure revenue business over the coming years.
Further reading
For broader trends in enterprise defense, explore our Cybersecurity section.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Financial IT.
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