Kevin Mandia (케빈 맨디아), who sold Mandiant to Google for $5.4 billion, has founded a new AI-based cybersecurity startup called Armadin and raised funding.

TechCrunch reported on March 10 local time that Armadin raised $189.9 million in seed and Series A funding led by Accel. GV, Kleiner Perkins, Menlo Ventures, 8VC, Ballistic Ventures and In-Q-Tel, an incubator under the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), also participated in the round.

TechCrunch said it was the largest funding round ever for an early-stage security startup.

Mandia is a security expert and previously co-founded Ballistic Ventures, a security-focused fund, with Kleiner Perkins' Ted Schlein (테드 슐라인). He warned of the emergence of AI hackers and said, "If AI launches an attack, hacking that used to take days will be completed in minutes." With that in mind, Armadin aims to develop autonomous security agents that learn and respond to threats without human involvement.

Armadin plans to provide automated security agents capable of countering AI-based attacks, helping white hats gain an edge in the fight against black hats. Armadin's co-founders include former Google Cloud security engineer Travis Lanham (트래비스 란햄), former Mandiant executive Evan Pena (에반 페냐) and Google security operations team engineer David Slater (데이비드 슬레이터).