XBOW

XBOW

Automated web security benchmark solver

Overview

XBOW provides automated web security benchmarks using real-world scenarios with clear success criteria, such as flag capture. It works by generating Python programs that exploit specific vulnerabilities (like XML deserialization) and can deploy embedded bash scripts, while also debugging its own code and the target server environment. It stands apart by sourcing benchmarks from PortSwigger, PentesterLab, and public CTFs, focusing on practical situations rather than puzzles, and by solving challenges without needing pre-defined descriptions. The goal is to offer practical, automated web security practice and evaluation for users seeking realistic penetration testing experiences.

Significant Headcount Growth

About XBOW

Simplify's Rating
Why XBOW is rated
B-
Rated B on Competitive Edge
Rated B on Growth Potential
Rated C on Differentiation

Industries

Enterprise Software

Cybersecurity

Company Size

201-500

Company Stage

Series C

Total Funding

$272M

Headquarters

Seattle, Washington

Founded

1995

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Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • XBOW closed a $35 million extension on May 6, 2026, from Accenture, NVIDIA, Samsung, SentinelOne.
  • XBOW serves 100-plus customers worldwide, including Moderna, Seznam, and several strategic investors.
  • XBOW published critical CVEs in Microsoft Bing and Devices Pricing Program during 2026.

What critics are saying

  • Microsoft can bundle similar testing inside Security Copilot, compressing XBOW's pricing power by 2027.
  • GPU-heavy autonomous hacking burns cash and limits margins as customers demand cheaper continuous coverage.
  • A single misuse scandal, exploited customer environment, or regulatory backlash can freeze enterprise adoption.

What makes XBOW unique

  • XBOW embeds autonomous pentesting into Microsoft Security Copilot and Sentinel, announced March 23, 2026.
  • Oege de Moor built GitHub Copilot, giving XBOW rare attacker-plus-platform credibility.
  • XBOW validates exploits, not scans, using agent swarms and real-world benchmark targets.

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Funding

Total Funding

$272M

Above

Industry Average

Funded Over

5 Rounds

Series C funding is usually for startups that are doing well and are looking for more money to fuel major growth, such as acquiring other companies, expanding into global markets, or launching new product lines. Investors typically include larger venture capital firms and private equity.
Series C Funding Comparison
Below Average

Industry standards

$50M
$40M
Figma
$50M
Medium
$62M
SeatGeek
$100M
Oura

Benefits

Company Equity

Remote Work Options

Career Growth

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

↑ 29%

1 year growth

↑ 13%

2 year growth

↑ 22%
WOWTALE
Aug 3rd, 2026
Horizon3 raises $250M Series E at $2B+ valuation to lead the 'AI vs. AI' security era.

Horizon3 raises $250M Series E at $2B+ valuation to lead the 'AI vs. AI' security era. Cyberattacks now move at the speed of AI, and traditional, human-paced defenses are struggling to keep up. As attackers increasingly wield AI of their own, the industry has entered what some call an "AI vs. AI" era - one in which defenders must fight machines with machines. Horizon3, an AI-native proactive security company based in San Francisco, is betting that the best defense is a good offense. Its flagship platform, NodeZero, is an autonomous penetration-testing tool that safely attacks an organization's own production environment. It shows exactly how an adversary would chain together misconfigurations, weak credentials, and identity gaps to compromise critical systems, offers fix guidance, and then instantly verifies that the remediation worked. As it tests, NodeZero can also plant honeypots to catch AI attackers already inside the network. That "attack, fix, verify" loop has driven 120% year-over-year ARR growth. Horizon3 now protects more than 7,000 organizations worldwide, including multinational banks, major healthcare networks, and four Fortune 10 enterprises. The company is FedRAMP High authorized and says it has safely executed 310,000 tests in production environments - the "data moat" it credits for its results. Discover more Stocks & Bonds Foreign Language Resources Horizon3 was founded in 2019 by CEO Snehal Antani and a team of technology and military veterans. Antani previously served as the first CTO of the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), and before that as CTO and SVP at Splunk and CIO at GE Capital, beginning his career as a software engineer at IBM. The company announced a $250 million Series E co-led by existing investors NightDragon and NEA. The oversubscribed round drew seven new investors - including Acrew Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Singapore's EDBI, and SAIC - alongside returning backers such as Craft Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures. The round values Horizon3 at more than $2 billion, roughly triple its $650 million valuation at Series D just over a year ago. As part of the deal, Dave DeWalt - founder of NightDragon and former CEO of FireEye and McAfee - and NightDragon managing director Morgan Kyauk will join Horizon3's board. The company plans to use the capital to scale its go-to-market operations, expand into Singapore, Australia, and across EMEA, and build a continuous learning loop between AI attackers and AI defenders, including new autonomous "blue-team" agents that remediate findings directly from NodeZero pentests. A crowded 'AI vs. AI' security market. Capital is pouring into cybersecurity as AI automates both attack and defense. In the offensive, autonomous-pentesting niche where Horizon3 operates, rivals include XBOW and Pentera. On the defensive side, security-automation firm Torq reached unicorn status on a $140 million round, while others race to embed AI across detection, endpoint, and identity. The common thread: as vulnerabilities multiply, the winners will be those that can not just find exploitable problems, but fix them at machine speed.

Premier Media Group
Jul 14th, 2026
Everett company topped region's 2Q VC deals; seattle-area total down from year ago.

Everett company topped region's 2Q VC deals; seattle-area total down from year ago. * john stearns * 21 hrs ago. Everett fusion-energy company Helion recorded the largest fundraising deal in the second quarter in the greater Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan area, according to the latest venture-capital report from Seattle-based PitchBook and the Washington, D.C.-based National Venture Capital Association. Helion in June announced a $465-million Series G investment round to accelerate commercial deployment of fusion, scale manufacturing capacity, and expand the company's ability to deliver clean electricity to customers. The latest deal valued the company at more than $15 billion. The Helion deal comprised almost a third of the $1.5 billion invested in greater Seattle area companies last quarter in about 78 deals. That was up from the roughly $1.2 billion raised in the first quarter in 77 deals, but far below the $2.3 billion from second quarter 2025 in about 100 deals, data showed. Nationally, $143.9 billion was invested last quarter in an estimated 5,039 deals, up from $85.8 billion in second quarter 2025, according to the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor for 2Q 20206. Redmond-based Starcloud, which is developing space-based data centers, reported the greater Seattle area's second-largest deal in the second quarter, raising $170 million and taking its valuation past $1 billion. Seattle-based Xbow, which says it's an autonomous offensive security company redefining cyber defense for the AI era, raised $155 million in Series C financing in the quarter, rounding out the top three deals. Another space-industry company, Starfish Space, a satellite-servicing startup based in Tukwila, raised an estimated $115 million, the fourth-largest deal in the metro area last quarter. Seattle-based Gradial, an agentic AI company focused on transforming enterprise marketing operations, took the No. 5 spot in the quarter, raising $65 million. Other deals included Seattle-based Endurance Energy, which is developing subsea geothermal power, $54 million in a Series A, and Seattle-based Vedana Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing next-generation therapies for migraine prevention, which reported a $46-million Series A. Commenting on the national VC landscape, Nizar Tarhuni, executive vice president of research and market intelligence at PitchBook, said in a statement, "SpaceX's IPO was the first of three potential trillion-dollar listings by US VC-backed companies in 2026, and what many want to view as the opening of an IPO window. The scale of these companies is their differentiating factor, though, largely boxing out the rest of VC from public markets." "The pipeline of companies in IPO registration remains low, and broad liquidity hasn't yet returned, leaving exit value very concentrated through Q2, and very likely through the rest of 2026," he continued Tarhuni. "The same concentration is showing up in how capital gets raised: nearly half of all H1 (first half 2026) capital commitments went to just three firms, and managers with track records pulled in more than nine out of every 10 dollars deployed into venture funds. LPs aren't spreading bets anymore - they're consolidating around track records and brands, a response to five years of thin distributions. This year's numbers will look like a recovery, but for most of the industry, it likely won't feel like one." In a separate statement, Bobby Franklin, president and CEO at NVCA, said, "The second quarter reinforced an emerging trend: capital is flowing back into American innovation with real force. Investment activity is picking up, fundraising is improving, and there are early signs the IPO market is beginning to reopen. AI continues to drive much of the market's momentum, even as investment and fundraising remain concentrated across a relatively small number of companies and funds. Healthier IPO and M&A markets will be critical to unlocking value, restoring liquidity, broadening access to capital, and supporting the next generation of American innovators across the country."

Xbow
May 7th, 2026
XBOW Secures Additional $35M from Strategic Investors, Including Select Customers and Ecosystem Partners

Accenture Ventures, DNX Ventures, Liberty Global, NVentures, Samsung, and SentinelOne Back Rising Demand for Continuous Offensive Security

ConnectWeb
May 6th, 2026
News & articles.

News & articles. At ConnectWeb Connectweb has a team of editors and researchers collating the most relevant information to you and your industry. All Directories' publications and sites provide a wealth of information for research or marketing, and are used by public and corporate libraries, educational institutions, government departments, corporations and SMEs across the country. You are here: Home News Access the latest company news and announcements distributed through Medianet. Technology & Innovation 06/05/2026 22:10 XBOW secures additional $35M from strategic investors, including select customers and ecosystem partners. Accenture Ventures, DNX Ventures, Liberty Global, NVentures, Samsung, and SentinelOne Back Rising Demand for Continuous Offensive Security SEATTLE-BUSINESS WIRE- XBOW, the leader in autonomous offensive security, today announced $35 million in additional Series C financing from investors Accenture Ventures, DNX Ventures, Liberty Global Tech Ventures, NVentures (NVIDIA's venture capital arm), Samsung Ventures, and SentinelOne S Ventures. The raise extends its previously announced $120 million Series C round, and highlights a broader shift: major enterprises are not just adopting XBOW's platform, but investing in it as they look to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated, AI-driven attacks. "We're learning in real time from teams operating at massive scale, and using that insight to build faster for defenders on the front lines," said Oege de Moor, Founder and CEO, XBOW. "The strongest alignment is when your customers are also in the trenches with you as investors and partners." XBOW now serves more than 100 customers worldwide, including several strategic investors in this round, alongside industry leaders like Moderna and Seznam. "The attacker's point of view is foundational to defense, but difficult to operationalize. XBOW changes this by surfacing exploitable and novel findings at machine speed," said Alex Krongold, Director, Corporate Development & Ventures, SentinelOne. "Each XBOW agent operates like an extension of our in-house red team, allowing us to scale offensive testing with speed and depth that was previously out of reach." Continuous Offensive Security at Machine Speed Until now, attackers were constrained by talent. Even the most sophisticated adversaries could not target every system, every version, all the time. With AI, attackers now operate continuously and at scale, probing every release, every environment, and every exposed surface. Traditional human-led penetration testing cannot keep pace with AI-driven attackers and modern development cycles. XBOW uses AI to find and exploit vulnerabilities in applications the way attackers do, running continuously instead of as a point-in-time pentest. It produces validated findings with a low false-positive rate, and can also confirm the exploitability of findings surfaced by other tools so security teams aren't chasing noise. As software ships faster, continuous offensive testing is becoming a core part of the security stack. XBOW lets customers test more often, cut validation backlogs, and proactively stay ahead of attackers rather than reacting to them. Fueling Global Expansion This latest financing further accelerates XBOW's go-to-market expansion and international growth strategy. With the deep expertise and regional network of DNX Ventures across Asia Pacific, combined with Samsung's role as a preferred reseller in South Korea, XBOW is expanding its distribution channels and partner ecosystem to accelerate adoption in this key global market. "We're seeing accelerating demand for XBOW as organizations look for continuous, intelligent security testing," said a Samsung Ventures America representative. "As a customer, we've experienced the platform's ability to surface real-world risks with speed and precision. XBOW stands out in a crowded market, and we're excited to now back this talented team as both a partner and investor." The company recently surpassed 250 employees and continues to scale its go-to-market, engineering, and operations teams to meet accelerating enterprise demand. As XBOW enters its next phase of growth, it remains focused on expanding its global footprint and enabling security teams to operate at attacker speed, continuously, safely, and at scale. About XBOW XBOW is the autonomous offensive security company redefining cyber defense for the AI era. Combining AI reasoning with offensive security workflows, the XBOW platform delivers expert-level security testing at machine speed. XBOW empowers security teams to transform from reactive to proactive defense at AI scale. For XBOW customers, autonomous offense is the best defense. Contact details: * images - screenshot_2026-05-05_at_4.50.43%e2%80%afpm.jpg download. ConnectWeb. ConnectWeb is Australia's leading publisher of biographical data, directories and specialist newsletters. With ConnectWeb you gain access to its comprehensive database of contacts and companies in media, government and associations. Connect with Connectweb.

Citybiz
May 6th, 2026
XBOW raises additional $35M as strategic investors back autonomous offensive security platform.

XBOW raises additional $35M as strategic investors back autonomous offensive security platform. May 6, 2026 XBOW, an autonomous offensive security company focused on AI-driven penetration testing, has raised an additional $35 million in Series C funding from a group of strategic investors, extending its previously announced $120 million Series C round and underscoring growing enterprise demand for continuous security validation tools. The new capital comes from Accenture Ventures, DNX Ventures, Liberty Global Tech Ventures, NVentures (NVIDIA's venture arm), Samsung Ventures, and SentinelOne S Ventures, with participation that includes both financial backing and active customer adoption. According to the company, several of the investors in this extension round are also customers of the XBOW platform, reflecting a trend in which enterprises are increasingly investing in cybersecurity tools they actively deploy within their own environments. XBOW develops an AI-native offensive security platform designed to continuously test applications for vulnerabilities by simulating attacker behavior at machine speed. The system runs ongoing penetration testing rather than relying on traditional point-in-time assessments, a model the company says is increasingly insufficient in modern software environments where applications are updated frequently and attack surfaces evolve continuously. "We're learning in real time from teams operating at massive scale, and using that insight to build faster for defenders on the front lines," said Oege de Moor, Founder and CEO of XBOW. "The strongest alignment is when your customers are also in the trenches with you as investors and partners." The company said its platform uses AI agents to identify and validate exploitable vulnerabilities across applications, helping security teams prioritize real threats and reduce the backlog of false positives that often result from conventional scanning and testing tools. XBOW currently serves more than 100 customers globally, including enterprise organizations such as Moderna and Seznam, alongside strategic investors participating in the latest round. Security professionals and investors alike have pointed to the increasing complexity of cyber threats as a driver of demand for automated offensive testing. As AI tools lower the barrier for attackers to probe systems at scale, enterprises are under pressure to adopt more continuous and proactive security approaches. Alex Krongold, Director of Corporate Development and Ventures at SentinelOne, said traditional penetration testing models are no longer sufficient to match the speed and scale of modern threats. "The attacker's point of view is foundational to defense, but difficult to operationalize," Krongold said. "XBOW changes this by surfacing exploitable and novel findings at machine speed. Each XBOW agent operates like an extension of our in-house red team." Unlike traditional security tools that often focus on static scanning or periodic audits, XBOW positions its platform as a continuous offensive testing layer that integrates into development and security workflows. The system is designed to validate whether vulnerabilities are actually exploitable, helping security teams prioritize remediation efforts more effectively. The company said its platform can also analyze findings generated by other security tools, verifying exploitability and reducing noise that typically slows down remediation processes. The new funding will support XBOW's international expansion and go-to-market efforts, particularly in Asia-Pacific markets where the company is leveraging partnerships with DNX Ventures and Samsung Ventures. Samsung is also acting as a reseller in South Korea, providing a distribution channel for enterprise adoption in the region. "We're seeing accelerating demand for XBOW as organizations look for continuous, intelligent security testing," said a representative from Samsung Ventures America. "XBOW stands out in a crowded market, and we're excited to now back this talented team as both a partner and investor." The company said it has grown to more than 250 employees as it scales engineering, sales, and operations functions to support enterprise demand. Its growth reflects broader trends in cybersecurity, where organizations are increasingly shifting toward automated, always-on security validation tools in response to faster development cycles and more sophisticated attack vectors. As enterprises move toward continuous deployment and AI-assisted software development, XBOW is positioning its autonomous offensive security platform as a foundational layer in modern cybersecurity stacks - designed to help organizations test systems at the same speed at which they are built and attacked.

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