Rome-based cybersecurity startup Exein has raised $270 million in a Series C funding round led by Headline. The investment brings the company's valuation to $1.7 billion. The capital will support global expansion, including new offices in the Bay Area and South Korea by 2027, alongside an expanded revolving credit facility from J.P. Morgan and KfW.
Founded in 2018, Exein provides security for IoT devices by embedding code directly at the kernel level. The company's Photon platform currently operates across more than two billion connected devices in sectors such as automotive, energy, healthcare, and industrial automation. Approximately half of the company's revenue now originates from the Asia-Pacific region.
The company plans to develop a foundation model for physical AI security trained on two years of machine telemetry data. Exein aims to deploy autonomous agents capable of identifying and responding to threats without human intervention. The firm targets the release of its first foundation models in the first quarter of 2027.
The cybersecurity market for IoT is projected to grow from $35.5 billion in 2024 to $141.8 billion by 2030. Exein faces competition from firms like Claroty, Nozomi Networks, and Armis, which focus on network-layer security. Exein differentiates its approach by blocking malicious code before execution rather than monitoring networks for anomalies.
