Beelzebub,
an Italy-based cybersecurity startup developing an AI-native platform to
protect organisations from AI-driven cyberattacks, has raised a €3 million seed
funding round led exclusively by United Ventures. The investment follows a
€300,000 pre-seed round backed by strategic investors and advisors, bringing
the company’s total funding to €3.3 million.
Founded
by Mario Candela, Beelzebub is addressing the growing challenge posed by
AI-powered cyberattacks, which enable attackers to automate vulnerability
discovery, generate custom malware and launch large-scale attacks at machine
speed.
As cyber threats become increasingly sophisticated and regulatory
frameworks such as the NIS2 Directive and the Cyber Resilience Act raise
security requirements across Europe, organisations are under pressure to
strengthen their cyber defences.
Rather
than relying solely on perimeter protection, Beelzebub operates on an
assumed-breach model, detecting malicious activity from attackers already
inside a network. Its platform combines attack simulation, deception technology
and automated threat analysis to identify, isolate and respond to threats
before they can cause damage.
The
platform consists of three integrated components. Arcangelo simulates targeted
attacks to continuously test an organisation’s defences, while Beelzebub
Managed deploys AI-powered decoy infrastructure that attracts and detects
attackers inside a network. Once a threat is identified, Caronte, the
platform’s AI malware analyst, automatically reverse-engineers malicious
software and generates incident reports, either in the cloud or fully
on-premises for organisations with strict data security requirements.
The
platform is available as both a SaaS solution and an on-premises deployment and
is designed to meet NIS2 compliance requirements.
Mario
Candela, CEO and founder of Beelzebub, said that the rise of AI-powered
attackers has fundamentally changed cybersecurity, requiring organisations to
complement human expertise with AI-based systems capable of responding at
machine speed:
Beelzebub’s
product adapts to new types of malware and is always updated to match the
current state of the most sophisticated attacks. This seed round will
supercharge our efforts to bring modern cybersecurity to the companies who
cannot afford to compromise.
Beelzebub
will use the new funding to expand its research team, open commercial offices
in Rome and San Francisco by the end of the year, accelerate customer
acquisition across Europe with a particular focus on organisations subject to
NIS2 requirements, and continue developing new technologies designed to protect
AI agents directly.