Archipelo comes out of stealth with $12M funding to secure human and AI-driven code

When it comes to AI software, you can build something clever, but that’s not always the same as building something that is secure. With so much software now getting written by AI, having a window into its security can be a challenge. That’s the premise of Archipelo, a San Francisco-based cybersecurity startup that is today emerging from stealth with $12 million in funding.

Archipelo’s pitch is that it has a platform for so-called ‘Developer Security Posture Management’ (DevSPM).

“We discovered that there is no developer security posture tool, and that’s what we built,” said Matthew Wise, CEO and co-founder of Archipelo, over a call. “What we found is that every enterprise has this problem. You can have a Fortune 500 bank that understands the productivity gains when developers use AI for coding, and they also understand the risks. But they don’t have a solution that enables them to observe and monitor all instances of AI coding usage [to identify that risk].”

Human error is estimated to be responsible for over 74% of security breaches (Verizon DBIR 2023). However, with AI-generated code, the issue is now vastly more complex. Archipelo’s platform is aimed at enterprises proactively secure both human and AI-driven code creation before security vulnerabilities reach production.

The funding — which Archipelo will use for product expansion and go-to-market efforts — includes both an unannounced $4 million pre-seed and an $8 million seed round led by Dell Technologies Capital. Archipelo’s competitors in the “cloud-to-code security” space include Palo Alto Networks (Prisma Cloud), Wiz, MSFT (Defender), GitHub , Gitlab, Snyk, Checkmarx, and Veracode. Veracode, which has so far raised $114.3 million, according to Crunchbase.

However, Archipelo claims to set itself apart from the above as it puts the developer under the microscope to monitor software risks before they become incidents. And in Archipelo’s view, the developer can be a human or an AI agent or AI coding tool. Other companies are still developing the capability to cover AI gents and AI coding tools during development. 

Wise added: “This is not a strategic round for Dell. It’s a standard VC seed round. Dell isn’t a customer (yet).” Customers include Fortune 500 enterprise customers in banking, healthcare and defense, but Wise said it was not yet possible to disclose the names, as they are in the middle of deployments.

Also participating in the round was Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Tai, David Weisburd (10X Capital), Gil Penchina, Ed Roman (Hack VC), Anima Anandkumar, Samsung NEXT, and Nima Capital.