Equixly raises €10 million to solve the billion-dollar API security crisis with its AI hacker agents
Equixly, an agentic AI hacking platform, has announced that it has raised €10 million in a Series A round led by 33N Ventures, with participation from Alpha Intelligence Capital, JME Ventures, 360 Capital and Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze. The funding will be used to expand the team, develop proprietary AI models and accelerate global expansion, starting with the launch of commercial and marketing operations in the United Kingdom scheduled for early next year.
Founded in 2022 by brothers Mattia Dalla Piazza and Alessio Dalla Piazza, serial entrepreneurs and former IBM, UniCredit and Accenture employees, Equixly is a penetration testing platform designed for the scale and complexity of the modern API-based web.
APIs generate over half of all web traffic, and a large enterprise manages an average of 500 to 2,500 APIs. They have become the fastest-growing battleground for hackers: 44% of malicious bots already target APIs, and attacks will grow by 548% by 2030, the company reports in a statement. In 2025 alone, API attacks cost businesses worldwide £170 billion.
As organisations become increasingly dependent on APIs, protecting them has become crucial, but threats are evolving faster and in more complex ways than current testing methods can handle.
Manual penetration tests are accurate but expensive and cannot keep pace with innovation; automated scanners are fast but do not detect more complex vulnerabilities, such as business logic attacks, where hackers manipulate workflows to steal data, take control of accounts or steal funds. The result is that many companies are forced to choose between scalability and security.
Equixly identifies up to 80% more vulnerabilities than traditional DAST tools, directly during the development phase. By mapping the entire API application, the platform can also discover the 10–20% of ‘shadow’ endpoints that companies often don’t even know they have, while maintaining a false positive rate of less than 1%, allowing teams to focus on solving real problems.
This is possible thanks to Equixly’s proprietary AI agents, which constantly identify vulnerabilities throughout the entire development cycle and automate the most complex API security tests. The platform integrates with existing systems, making the process compliant and secure.
Once integrated, Equixly agents work continuously, learning the specific context of the software’s use, reconstructing its logic and simulating targeted attacks to uncover weaknesses, just as an experienced hacker would do.
This enables Equixly to flag issues in real time, allowing developers and security teams to intervene earlier, reduce costs and increase resilience, and identify complex business logic and edge cases; recognising hidden and emerging threats where traditional scanners cannot reach or would not know what to look for.
Equixly was among the first to highlight the emerging risks of Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, and this approach will become increasingly critical as AI-generated code accelerates development and expands the attack surface beyond the capabilities of traditional security tools.
Equixly has already been chosen by a growing number of European companies in the banking, energy, insurance and retail sectors, helping them to strengthen and future-proof their systems in the face of evolving threats. It has been recognised in several Gartner Hype Cycles 2025, named among the leading Italian deep-tech start-ups by BCG and UniCredit, and has joined the Google for Startups Growth Academy 2025 programme dedicated to global companies using AI to enhance digital defence.
Mattia Dalla Piazza, CEO and co-founder of Equixly, says: “Businesses can no longer rely on static or occasional testing to secure systems that serve millions of customers and drive global markets. With new regulations on the horizon and the exponential growth of APIs, the demand for autonomous security will become increasingly crucial. . Equixly makes advanced security testing continuous, autonomous, and accessible to every development and security team. With our agentic AI infrastructure and fully developed models, companies gain the human reasoning capabilities they need, with the scalability required by modern software, while ensuring maximum data protection and privacy.
Gonçalo Borges, 33N Ventures, states: “Equixly is building the security layer for modern software, where development is transformed by AI and infrastructure is defined by APIs. Its solution empowers application security teams by offering a scalable, contextual, real-time approach, identifying vulnerabilities that traditional vendors often miss. This team is set to drive European cybersecurity innovation and become a global leader in the next generation of application security.” (pictured is the startup team).
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