Exein, an Italian company that builds security software that runs inside connected devices, raised $270m in new equity at a $1.7bn valuation, it announced on 15 September 2026. US investment firm Headline led the round, which Exein said was significantly oversubscribed.
New investors Sofina, Goldman Sachs, the EIB Group through the European Tech Champions Initiative, KfW Capital and T.Capital, Deutsche Telekom's corporate venture arm, joined. Existing backers Balderton, HV, Intrepid Growth Partners, 33N Ventures, Lakestar, Supernova Invest, Blue Cloud Ventures and Geodesic Capital also took part. EconomyUp and the law firm Orrick both described Exein as an Italian unicorn, a private company valued at more than $1bn.
Alongside the equity, Exein is enlarging a revolving credit facility led by J.P. Morgan, with KfW joining as a lender. It did not disclose the size of the facility or give the round a series name.
“AI is moving out of the cloud and into the physical world, and this is the transition Exein was built for. We've developed deep expertise in how machines operate, invested heavily in the technology needed to protect them and built a global footprint that gives us an understanding of machines at a scale few others can match. Frontier models are pushing the patch window to zero. Attacks now happen at machine speed, so defense has to as well. Physical AI is the natural next step for Exein: we're building machine-time security for machine-time attacks.”Gianni Cuozzo, Founder and CEO, Exein
What Exein does
Exein was founded in Rome in 2018 by Gianni Cuozzo, who is chief executive, according to EconomyUp. Its software is built into IoT devices and connected infrastructure and protects them while they run. Photon, a product launched earlier in 2026, works at the operating system kernel level to stop malicious code before it executes, the company said.
Exein said its software is present on more than two billion devices and that it now sees around 5,000 new, non-repetitive attacks a week across that network, five times the volume a year earlier. It is now positioning itself around what it calls physical AI: robots, drones, vehicles and other machines that make decisions in the real world.
The company is training its own foundation model for this market on two years of telemetry from its device footprint. It said an agentic security architecture built on it will ship by the end of 2026, with the first models expected in the first quarter of 2027.
What the money is for
Exein said the funds will pay for expansion in the US, including a larger team and a new office in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in Asia-Pacific. Since its previous rounds it has set up an Asia-Pacific headquarters in Taiwan and a legal entity in Japan, with expansion there planned for the fourth quarter of 2026, and it expects to open an office in South Korea by 2027. EconomyUp reported that it also has offices in Germany and the US.
The credit facility is meant to support acquisitions in Europe and the US. The company said it wants to be able to move quickly when suitable targets appear.
"Attacks now happen at machine speed, so defense has to as well," Cuozzo said. Clarey Zhu, a partner at Headline, said securing the physical world would become "one of the defining cybersecurity challenges of the next decade". Exein did not disclose revenue or headcount.
The funding so far
The round followed two raises in 2025. EconomyUp reported that Exein raised €70m (about $82m) in a Series C led by Balderton Capital in July 2025, and €100m (about $117m) in equity and debt led by Blue Cloud Ventures in December 2025, when J.P. Morgan also provided a credit line.
Earlier, 33N led a €15m (about $16m) Series B in July 2024, and United Ventures led the seed round in 2018, according to EconomyUp. The company has not published a cumulative total.
Company website: exein.io