Most cybersecurity startups sell shields. Twenty sells the sword, and investors just valued that at $1bn.
The company, which describes itself as America’s first venture-backed cyber warfare firm, has raised a $100mn Series B led by Accel, Axios reported. The round, with Point72 Ventures, Caffeinated Capital and Friends & Family Capital also taking part, brings its total funding to $138mn.
What makes it stand out is not the money but the mission. “We were founded to industrialize cyber warfare,” chief executive Joseph Lin said, and he means the offensive kind.
Selling attack, not just defence
That is rare, and deliberately loud. The cyber industry overwhelmingly markets defence, detecting intrusions and patching holes, like the AI tools that probe a company’s own attack surface. Twenty instead builds AI-enabled systems meant to carry out operations against adversaries, and says it already has contracts with the US military and intelligence community, though it declined to give detail.
