Dutch Startup Dawnguard Raises $3M to Embed Security in System Design

Dawnguard, a Netherlands-based cybersecurity startup founded in 2025, has raised $3 million in pre-seed funding led by 9900 Capital and angel investors to expand its engineering team and accelerate production deployments. The company is pioneering a security-by-design approach that integrates AI and machine learning to embed security directly into system architecture from the earliest design phases, rather than treating it as an afterthought. Its platform provides a collaborative workspace where security architects, DevOps engineers, and cloud teams co-design secure, compliant, and scalable infrastructure, with automated pre-deployment validation and continuous post-deployment enforcement. Led by CEO Mahdi Abdulrazak and CTO Kim van Lavieren, both with extensive experience in military and major tech companies, Dawnguard aims to address the $196 billion cybersecurity market's critical vulnerabilities arising from design flaws and AI-generated code. Early adopters have reported significant improvements, including faster deployment cycles and better alignment between security intent and implementation. By automating security architecture and enforcement, Dawnguard seeks to transform cybersecurity from reactive to proactive, tackling threats at their source in cloud-native environments.