Dreadnode, an early stage startup specializing in offensive AI security, has raised $14 million in a funding round from an investment group that includes Decibel, Next Frontier Capital, In-Q-Tel (IQT), Sands Capital, and Indie VC.
The Dreadnode Series A investment lands amidst heightened interest in the security of AI technologies being deployed at scale around the world and signals a bet on the need for new products aimed at stress-testing artificial intelligence systems for vulnerabilities.
The brainchild of former NVIDIA AI red-team lead Will Pearce and ex-NetSPI VP of Research Nick Landers, Dreadnode styles itself as a pioneer in “offensive machine learning” with tooling for enterprise defenders to safely simulate how cutting-edge AI models might be exploited in the wild.
Dreadnode said the new capital will be used to drive innovation and go-to-market initiatives for two new products — Strikes and Spyglass — that form the core of its platform.
The company describes Strikes “an AI agent training ground focused on offensive cyber security” that provides “real-world scenarios to test your agent.”. In practice, Strikes is serving up a simulated battleground for AI-driven agents and models, where they can be trained and evaluated against realistic attack scenarios.
The company and its investors believe this approach allows AI developers and red teams to iteratively improve their models’ resilience by repeatedly exposing them to diverse offensive techniques in a safe environment.
Spyglass, on the other hand, is Dreadnode’s product for testing AI systems that have already been deployed. The company calls Spyglass “an AI red teaming product for attacking, evaluating and optimizing AI applications and gaining actionable insights” and said it enables organizations to continuously audit and probe their live AI models (whether language models, computer vision systems, or others) for weaknesses.
The Spyglass product integrates the latest adversarial machine learning research into practical tests, helping users identify vulnerabilities like prompt injection susceptibility, model bypasses, or data poisoning risks in their AI services.
Together, Dreadnode is positioning Strikes and Spyglass to cover the lifecycle of offensive AI security: from training-phase stress tests to deployment-phase red-team evaluations.
Dreadnode also offers Crucible, an AI hacking sandbox where security practitioners test, learn, and advance their AI red team skills.
“We’re equipping practitioners with the tools required to explore what’s possible when AI is applied — at scale — to offense,” Pearce said in a note announcing the new cash raise. “We’ve seen what AI is capable of across other domains—why should offensive security be different?”
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