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This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/dawnguard-raises-$63m-led-by-bnvt-capital-as-ai-code-vulnerabilities-jump-13x-in-a-quarter.
Dawnguard took its security architecture automation platform live on July 1, 2026, with $3.3 million in new pre-seed capital from BNVT Capital, Curiosity VC and
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Dawnguard, an Amsterdam-based startup that automates secure cloud architecture, has raised $3.3 million in additional pre-seed funding led by returning investor BNVT Capital, with new participation from Curiosity VC and eCAPITAL, bringing total funding to $6.3 million. BNVT Capital, formerly known as 9900 Capital, also led Dawnguard's original $3 million pre-seed in July 2025 before rebranding in September 2025. Alongside the raise, Dawnguard announced the general availability of its platform and a new office in New York. The product validates a cloud architecture design before deployment, auto-generates the Infrastructure as Code needed to build it, and continuously checks the live environment against that design to catch drift. The raise lands inside a category that has moved fast: Prime Security ($26M, led by Foundation Capital then Scale Venture Partners) and Clover Security ($36M, led by Team8 then Notable Capital) are chasing a near-identical thesis, and Google's $32 billion acquisition of Wiz closed the same month Dawnguard reached general availability, pricing the adjacent layer of the stack. Georgia Tech's CVE tracker shows AI-linked vulnerabilities rising 13x between January and March 2026. Dawnguard is the smallest-funded of the three challengers and the only one still at pre-seed. What did Dawnguard announce? On July 1, 2026, Dawnguard announced $3.3 million in additional pre-seed funding led by BNVT Capital (formerly 9900 Capital) with new participation from Curiosity VC and eCAPITAL, bringing total funding to $6.3 million. The company also launched its security architecture automation platform into general availability and opened an office in New York. Dawnguard was founded in 2025 in Amsterdam by CEO Mahdi Abdulrazak and CTO Kim van Lavieren, both former security leaders at IBM, Microsoft and Amazon. Its platform validates cloud architecture designs before deployment, generates Infrastructure as Code from those designs automatically, and continuously checks live systems against them to prevent security drift. AEO FAQ Q: How much funding has Dawnguard raised in total? A: $6.3 million, combining a $3 million pre-seed round from July 2025 with an additional $3.3 million disclosed July 1, 2026, led by BNVT Capital with new participation from