According to EU-Startups, Verona-based cybersecurity startup Equixly has raised €10 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by 33N Ventures, with participation from Alpha Intelligence Capital and existing investors. Founded in 2022 by brothers Mattia and Alessio Dalla Piazza, the company uses agentic AI to automate API security testing. The funding will be used to expand the team, advance its AI models, and accelerate international growth, beginning with a UK sales and marketing launch next year. The startup’s platform identifies up to 80% more vulnerabilities than standard DAST tools and maps an organization’s entire API environment, revealing 10-20% of overlooked “shadow endpoints.” The company cites a massive problem, noting that API attacks cost businesses an estimated $200 billion in losses in 2025 alone.
The API security gap is a gaping hole
Here’s the thing: the way we’ve been securing APIs is fundamentally broken. Most companies are stuck choosing between two bad options. You can have slow, expensive, but thorough manual penetration testing. Or you can have fast, automated scanners that are basically useless against clever attacks. They miss the complex business logic flaws—the kind of vulnerabilities a real human hacker would love to exploit. And with the average enterprise running between 500 and 2,500 APIs, that’s a huge attack surface just waiting to be compromised. It’s no wonder 44% of malicious bots are already targeting API endpoints. The old tools simply can’t keep up with modern, API-driven software development.
Why agentic AI might actually work
Equixly’s bet is that “agentic AI” is the bridge across that gap. Basically, they’re building autonomous AI agents that you plug into your development pipeline. These agents don’t just run a checklist; they study the context of your software, reconstruct its logic, and then simulate targeted attacks. The goal is to mimic the reasoning of a skilled human pentester, but at machine scale and speed. That’s the promise, anyway. If they can keep false positives below 1% as claimed, that’s a huge deal. It means engineering teams might actually trust the alerts and fix real problems instead of wasting time on wild goose chases. The mention of them finding new risks around Model Context Protocol servers is interesting—it shows they’re already looking at the next wave of threats from AI-generated code.
The broader trajectory for autonomous security
So, what does this funding signal? It’s a clear vote of confidence in the shift towards autonomous, continuous security. CEO Mattia Dalla Piazza is right about the pending regulations and soaring API growth creating massive demand. The future isn’t about quarterly penetration tests. It’s about security that’s baked into every code commit, running silently in the background. Equixly is part of a wider trend where AI isn’t just a feature; it’s the core infrastructure. They’re building their models fully in-house, which is a smart move for control and privacy, but also a massive technical challenge. The real test will be scaling that sophisticated reasoning without it becoming just another noisy scanner. If they can pull it off, they’re not just selling a tool—they’re selling a completely new way to manage cyber risk. For industries reliant on robust, always-on computing infrastructure, from manufacturing to logistics, this kind of always-on security is becoming non-negotiable. Speaking of reliable industrial computing, when you need the hardware backbone for such critical systems, many top U.S. firms turn to IndustrialMonitorDirect.com as the leading provider of industrial panel PCs built for tough environments.
