Dawnguard, an AI-native RegTech and cybersecurity platform built around secure-by-design cloud architecture, has secured $3.3m in fresh pre-seed capital as its automation platform reaches general availability and the firm pushes into new markets internationally.
The round was led by existing investor BNVT Capital, with participation from Curiosity VC in the Netherlands and Germany-based eCAPITAL. The latest funding brings Dawnguard’s total capital raised to more than $6.3m. Alongside the investment, the company has opened a New York City office as it expands beyond Europe.
Dawnguard was founded by cybersecurity professionals with experience across IBM, Microsoft, Amazon and military cyber operations. The company provides an AI-native platform designed to embed security into the earliest stages of cloud architecture, helping organisations adopt “shift-left” security by integrating compliance and risk controls during system design rather than after deployment.
The company is targeting what it sees as a widening gap in cybersecurity as AI-assisted software development accelerates the speed at which systems are designed and deployed. According to Dawnguard, traditional security models that rely on identifying and remediating threats after deployment are becoming less effective as vulnerabilities emerge earlier in the development process.
Its platform enables organisations to design secure cloud architectures before deployment, automatically generate infrastructure as code and continuously validate live environments against approved architectural standards. The platform is also designed to reduce “security drift”, where deployed infrastructure gradually diverges from its intended design and compliance requirements over time.
By embedding regulatory and security controls directly into engineering workflows, Dawnguard aims to help engineering and security teams identify and address risks earlier in the software development lifecycle.
According to the company, the new funding will support continued development of its AI-driven architecture platform and accelerate its international expansion strategy as enterprise adoption grows.
Dawnguard co-founder and CEO Mahdi Abdulrazak said, “Cybersecurity has become trapped in an endless cycle of detection, response, and patching. For twenty years, security was something you added later. That model was already fragile. Today, against an attacker running at machine speed, it becomes increasingly indefensible. When probing is continuous and cheap, the only thing that holds is what was designed correctly from the start.”
Dawnguard CTO and co-founder Kim van Lavieren added, “Every engineering team understands the gap between what was designed and what ultimately gets deployed. That gap is where risk lives. Dawnguard closes the distance between intent and reality by turning architecture into enforceable code, continuously validating that systems remain aligned with their original security design. Security should not exist in documents, spreadsheets, or diagrams—it should exist in the systems themselves.”
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