Europe has a brand new unicorn: Italian startup Exein has simply raised a $270 million funding spherical led by Headline at a $1.7 billion valuation on the promise of offering a cybersecurity layer for bodily AI — an evolution of its preliminary deal with IoT.
“The idea of Exein is that each machine ought to be capable to defend itself, regardless if they’re related to a safe community or not,” CEO Gianni Cuozzo instructed TechCrunch. The Rome-based firm has been doubling down on this strategy; its newest product, Photon, is a runtime safety resolution to stop assaults on the kernel stage of a tool.
This strategy requires working in shut partnership with producers, and Exein says it has been doing so since its inception in 2018. In accordance with Cuozzo, the selection to work straight with OEMs and silicon distributors was pushed by the conviction that related gadgets have been on the rise.
This created important tailwinds for Exein, which claims to have secured greater than 2 billion related gadgets in sectors the place cyberattacks could possibly be paralyzing, together with aerospace, industrial automation, automotive manufacturing, power, healthcare, and semiconductors.
The startup expects its progress to be sustained by the rise of bodily AI, which makes use of the identical provide chain. Cuozzo famous that his product can cowl AI-powered robots, drones, self-driving automobiles, sensors, sensible home equipment and different related gadgets operating fashions on the sting.
Buyers appear to agree: Exein says that its newest spherical was considerably oversubscribed. Its valuation has elevated thirty-fold since its Series B some two years ago, and greater than doubled because it secured equity and debt in December 2025 following its Collection C earlier final yr.
Moreover valuations, AI has additionally boosted attackers’ capabilities. In accordance with Cuozzo, that is being facilitated by open-source fashions that may run with out guardrails, and make it a lot simpler and cheaper to focus on bodily gadgets in novel methods.
Exein has already seen an increase in what Cuozzo calls “machine-speed assaults,” and intends to reply with a foundational mannequin for Bodily AI safety. The corporate is at present coaching the mannequin on machine knowledge and telemetrics, and plans to have it prepared within the first quarter of 2027.
Within the meantime, Exein intends to make use of the contemporary funding for M&As to finish its portfolio of merchandise, and rent workers to speed up its growth within the U.S. and within the Asia Pacific, which at present drives half of its income.
Cuozzo stated being unfold throughout three continents has been Exein’s essential problem up to now. The breadth of its presence took some adjusting to, but it surely has borne fruit, he stated, noting that the corporate is “rising 400% yr on yr.”
Whereas such progress numbers are sometimes onerous to keep up, Exein may get a hand from the European Union’s Cyber Resilience Act, whose reporting obligations kicked off final week. The Act will come into full pressure in December 2027, and requires producers to “be certain that all digital merchandise are secure from cyber threats.”
Pictured from left to proper: Gerardo Gagliardo, CFO & co-founder; Gianni Cuozzo, CEO & founder; Giovanni Alberto Falcione, CTO & co-founder.
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