The IT Nerd

As AI-assisted engineering accelerates how quickly software is designed, written, and shipped, cybersecurity teams are facing a harder problem: risk is being created earlier than traditional tools can see it. Dawnguard announced the public launch of its security architecture automation platform, making it available to organizations looking to design, build, and operate secure cloud-native systems from day zero through production. 

The launch marks the company’s move from enterprise design partnerships into general availability, following a year of platform development and customer validation. Alongside the product launch, Dawnguard announced the opening of its New York City office and an additional $3.3 million in pre-seed funding from existing investor BNVT Capital in the UK, with new participation from Curiosity VC in the Netherlands and eCAPITAL in Germany. The new capital brings Dawnguard’s total funding to more than $6.3 million.

Why this matters now

Cybersecurity has spent decades getting better at detecting, alerting, and responding to threats after systems are already built. That model is under increasing pressure. As software development speeds up, security teams are asked to protect systems that are more complex, more dynamic, and increasingly shaped by AI-generated code and autonomous engineering workflows.

Despite record spending on cybersecurity tools, breaches continue to originate from architectural weaknesses, insecure configurations, and design decisions that cannot simply be patched away. Dawnguard was founded on a simple belief: cybersecurity cannot continue to operate as a reactive industry. True cyber resilience begins at the drawing board, where systems are designed, validated, and deployed securely from the start. 

A new category for the Mythos era

The rise of AI, autonomous systems, and increasingly complex digital infrastructure has created what Dawnguard calls the Mythos Era: an environment where software evolves and is exploited faster than traditional security processes can keep pace. Security teams are overwhelmed by thousands of alerts, fragmented tooling, and endless patch cycles, while attackers increasingly exploit weaknesses embedded in architecture itself.

Dawnguard was built for this shift. Its platform turns secure architecture into deployable infrastructure, enabling organizations to:

• Design secure and compliant cloud architectures before deployment
• Automatically generate production-ready Infrastructure as Code
• Continuously validate that deployed environments remain aligned with approved designs
• Eliminate security drift between architectural intent and operational reality
• Enable engineering and security teams to collaborate within a shared architecture workspace

The platform is designed to eliminate the gap between security intent and operational reality. Engineering and security teams work in a shared architecture workspace where designs can be validated, translated into enforceable infrastructure, and checked continuously as systems evolve.

Unlike traditional security products that focus on detecting problems after systems are built, Dawnguard helps organizations prevent insecure patterns from being introduced in the first place. The result is a security model that starts at the drawing board and follows the system into production.

The team 

Dawnguard was founded by cybersecurity veterans from IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, and military cyber operations to challenge the industry’s dependence on reactive security and compliance-driven checkbox exercises. Since launching from stealth, the company has expanded its platform capabilities, strengthened integrations across cloud environments, and worked closely with enterprise design partners to bring security architecture automation into production.

The new funding will accelerate product development, AI-driven architecture intelligence, enterprise go-to-market expansion, and international growth.

The future is design-focused security

Dawnguard’s vision extends beyond improving security workflows. The company aims to establish security architecture as a foundational control layer for modern digital systems, where security, compliance, cost management, resilience, sustainability, performance, and operational excellence are built into infrastructure and the application layer from the moment they are conceived.

As organizations enter the Mythos Era, Dawnguard is betting that the future of cybersecurity will not be defined by faster alerts or longer patch lists. It will be defined by systems that are secure by design, continuously validated, and capable of adapting to an increasingly autonomous world.

 Dawnguard, a cybersecurity startup on a mission to make the digital world safer through intelligent, design-first security, has emerged from stealth with $3 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by 9900 Capital and a group of angel investors, from scale-up founders to experienced CIOs and CISOs. The funds will be used to expand Dawnguard’s engineering team, deepen enterprise integrations, and bring its platform to broader production use.

Dawnguard is introducing a new cybersecurity category. Rather than bolting on security in production, Dawnguard embeds it at the core of system architecture — ensuring secure, compliant, and scalable designs from the earliest phases of development.

Dawnguard’s holistic approach sets it apart. Rather than just scanning deployments or automating reviews, it provides a shared canvas for engineering and security teams to collaborate on secure, compliant architecture that also balances cost, resilience, and sustainability.

Dawnguard was born out of a broken model – where security was reactive, slow, and dangerously disconnected from the pace of modern development. The founding team, led by CEO Mahdi Abdulrazak and CTO Kim van Lavieren, is composed of industry veterans from military and big tech companies like IBM, Microsoft and Amazon, with decades of experience running large-scale security programs and with unique experience at the intersection of security, AI, and cloud. 

Dawnguard is set to flip shift-left and security-by-design on its head. Instead of treating security as an afterthought, Dawnguard embeds it directly into a system’s architecture, from day zero to day 10,000. The company is building various AI/ML-driven engines that integrate across the entire IT landscape to spot issues in the design phase, adapt to evolving environments, and make security native.

The platform is designed for security architects, DevOps engineers, and cloud teams. At its core, Dawnguard is a security architecture automation platform purpose-built for cloud-native environments. It helps teams validate cloud infrastructure designs before deployment, automatically generate production-ready Infrastructure as Code (IaC) from validated designs, and continuously enforce security posture after deployment to eliminate drift.

“Hundreds of security tools overwhelm CISOs with promises of better detection, yet few tackle the root issue: design flaws in code that AI-driven threats exploit. As attacks grow smarter, defenses must shift left—embedding resilience at the codebase. We are excited to back Dawnguard, who build protection by design, not patch by necessity,” said Chris Corbishley, Managing Partner 9900 Capital.

Looking ahead, Dawnguard aims to reshape how the industry embeds security in the AI era. The company plans to expand its platform to support more dynamic environments, close the security gap between “vibe coding” and the infrastructure where GenAI coded applications run, and deliver a new operating model for building trust at scale.