Rome Physical AI Cybersecurity Firm Exein Raises 234 Million Euros at 1.4 Billion Euro Valuation

Exein, a physical AI cybersecurity company headquartered in Rome, Italy, announced the completion of a new 234 million euro (about 270 million US dollars) funding round, giving it a post-money valuation of 1.4 billion euros (about 1.7 billion US dollars). The proceeds will be used to accelerate the company's expansion in the United States and Asia-Pacific and to advance its physical AI security business, which protects intelligent machines that use AI to perceive, decide and act in the physical world, including robots, drones and autonomous vehicles.

The round was led by Headline, with participation from Sofina, Goldman Sachs, the European Investment Bank Group through ETCI, KfW Capital and T. Capital. Existing investors Balderton, HV, Intrepid Growth Partners, 33N Ventures, Lakestar, Supernova Invest, Blue Cloud Ventures and Geodesic Capital also joined the round. At the same time, Exein's existing revolving credit facility, led by JPMorgan, was expanded, with KfW joining as a new lender.

Founded in 2018, Exein's physical AI cybersecurity technology is deployed across more than 2 billion connected devices, spanning industrial automation, automotive, energy, healthcare, semiconductors, aerospace and robotics. The company operates across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the United States, with about 50% of revenue coming from Asia-Pacific. Company figures show that its valuation has grown 30-fold in two years, while annual recurring revenue in the first half of 2026 grew fourfold year on year.

Earlier in 2026, Exein launched Photon, a preemptive runtime security architecture that operates at the kernel level and can block malicious code before it executes, an approach suited to autonomous machines where security response must occur at machine speed. The company is combining runtime security technology with machine data advantages to develop a proprietary foundation model designed specifically for physical AI security. Unlike general-purpose AI models trained mainly on human-generated data, this model learns from data reflecting how machines actually operate, with datasets built from years of real machine activity. The model will support autonomous security agents that can understand and protect the systems they run on at machine speed, without waiting for human intervention.

The company's network currently sees about 5,000 new unique attacks per week, five times the level in the same period of 2025. It plans to increase hiring, customers and partners in the United States over the next two years and to open a new office in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Other cybersecurity and AI security funding announced in 2026 includes: Cloudsmith in Belfast, which raised 61.5 million euros to secure AI-driven software supply chains; Qevlar AI in Paris, which raised 25.8 million euros for its agentic security operations platform; NeuralTrust in Barcelona, which raised 17.2 million euros to protect enterprise AI agents; and Escape, which raised 15.4 million euros for its AI-driven offensive security platform. In the connected-device sector, Finland's Test of Things raised 1.2 million euros to automate cybersecurity testing of IoT products. The above 2026 cybersecurity and AI security funding totals about 161.4 million euros, and together with Exein's latest round, the total comes to about 395.4 million euros.