Depthfirst founders (from left to right): Qasim Mithani, Daniele Perito and Andrea Michi.DepthfirstAndrea Michi spent nearly seven years at Google’s Deepmind developing artificial intelligence models that improved energy performance across windfarms and data centers. He realized that the most efficient way to build AI focused on solving large-scale problems isn’t to start with LLMs, and then adjust them to the task: it’s to build models from the ground up with a specific purpose in mind.In 2024, Michi quit Deepmind and cofounded Depthfirst to apply that thinking to cybersecurity, making AI models that autonomously find vulnerabilities and suggest fixes. The company is developing what it calls “General Security Intelligence,” a play on general artificial intelligence, which refers to AI that’s just as capable at general tasks as humans. His hope is that Depthfirst will find and fix vulnerabilities in any kind of software before a malicious, superintelligent AI model can exploit them.“We want to make sure these systems that are complex and fragile can sustain a world where AI hacking capabilities are superhuman and that means always staying one step ahead of the attackers,” Michi, who is Depthfirst’s CTO, tells Forbes.“The agent tries to figure out the most exploitable vulnerabilities.”