THE CRUNCH
Italian startup Exein has raised $270 million in a funding round led by Headline, valuing the company at $1.7 billion. The round brings the total raised by the IoT security specialist to over $600 million. Exein is developing a proprietary foundation model for physical AI security and plans to accelerate its global expansion, with a focus on the US market.
The company, founded in 2018, provides embedded and runtime security technology designed to monitor, detect, and contain threats in IoT devices. Exein's kernel-level solution aims to block attacks before they execute. The new funding will support the development of an agentic security architecture powered by a foundation model trained on real-world machine activity.
Exein founder and CEO Gianni Cuozzo described the move as a response to the shift of AI from the cloud into the physical world. He noted that attacks now happen at machine speed, requiring defence to operate at the same pace. The company is positioning its physical AI security as a way to protect systems against threats that evolve faster than traditional patching can address.