Insider Brief
- Astra Security raised $2.7 million in growth capital, led by Emergent Ventures, to expand AI-powered continuous vulnerability scanning and pentesting capabilities for cloud environments.
- The company’s platform uncovered 5,500 vulnerabilities per day in 2023, with AI-driven PTaaS, DAST scanning, and API security tools, helping clients detect and remediate over 2 million vulnerabilities.
- With 800+ customers across 70+ countries, including Loom, HackerRank, and the University of Cambridge, Astra Security aims to modernize cybersecurity by integrating AI and automation into continuous security monitoring.
PRESS RELEASE — Astra Security, the security platform with continuous vulnerability scanning and pentests, has announced the closing of a growth capital round — led by Emergent Ventures, with participation from the Neon Fund, Better Capital, Blume Ventures, and PointOne Capital. The funds will accelerate development and build capabilities to uncover vulnerabilities in cloud environments. The company also plans to double down its focus on using AI to give developers and security engineers the ability to build security detections. The company has been building its platform since 2018 while remaining cash-positive.
Last year, Astra Security uncovered nearly 5,500 vulnerabilities per day for its customers with its AI-powered pentest platform. This number is expected to increase threefold by the end of the year as cyber threats continue to evolve at an unprecedented pace. With AI, the speed at which code is being shipped rapidly increases. This means attackers have an even larger attack surface area to find vulnerabilities. AI has become equally popular among hackers for finding loopholes at scale, which can lead to more breaches.
“The cybercrime landscape is becoming increasingly complex with AI-based attacks,” said Shikhil Sharma, co-founder and CEO of Astra Security. “Traditional, periodic pentesting is no longer enough in today’s threat environment, and Astra Security is moving more businesses to continuous pentesting to stay ahead of hackers. The engineering world has become agile, collaborative, and automation-driven, but the cybersecurity industry has lagged behind. It’s our mission to breathe life into the security space by integrating AI, adopting a hacker’s mindset, and making the tech easy and accessible.”
Over 800 engineering teams in over 70 countries use Astra Security. AI powers the platform and can constantly mimic hacker behavior to check applications for vulnerabilities through fast detections. This includes PTaaS (Penetration Testing as a Service), a DAST vulnerability scanner, and an API Security Platform that all work together to find over 13,000 vulnerabilities. Last year, Astra Security helped its customers discover and prioritize remediation of over two million vulnerabilities.
“Security is increasingly shifting to the hands of developers, while security teams find themselves more overwhelmed than ever,” said Ananda Krishna, co-founder and CTO of Astra Security. “While pentests have been around for over a decade, they are overdue for an AI-first update — simplifying and streamlining the process. We’re focused on removing the frustration of continuous security monitoring so businesses can get on with everything else.”
Astra Security founders Shikhil Sharma and Ananda Krishna have been hackers and builders for over a decade — first helping big brands like Microsoft, Adobe, AT&T, Yahoo, and Blackberry find critical vulnerabilities in their infrastructure. This led to the creation of Astra Security and the company’s focus on an AI-powered platform to bring the cybersecurity industry forward.
Astra’s growth round totaled $2.7 million. The company is rapidly gaining traction among leading organizations. Last year, more than 25% of their customers were mid-sized and large companies, including Loom, HackerRank, ITC, Olx Autos, Mamaearth, Muthoot Finance, Bonusly Singapore Trade Exchange, Oscilar, University of Cambridge, CompTIA, and Prime Healthcare.
About Astra Security
Astra Security is a cyber security SaaS company simplifying otherwise chaotic penetration with its Pentest Platform. Astra Security’s AI-powered offensive vulnerability scanning engine emulates hacker behavior to scan applications for 10,000+ security tests. CTOs & CISOs trust Astra Security because it helps them fix vulnerabilities in record time and move from DevOps to DevSecOps with Astra Security’s CI/CD integrations.
800+ companies across the globe use Astra Security. Last year, Astra Security uncovered 2,000,000+ vulnerabilities for its customers, saving customers $69M+ in potential losses due to security vulnerabilities.
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