Europe has a new unicorn: Italian startup Exein has raised $270 million in a funding round led by Headline at a $1.7 billion valuation. The company's promise: providing a cybersecurity layer for physical AI β an evolution of its initial focus on IoT.
From IoT to Physical AI Security
"The concept of Exein is that every device should be able to defend itself, regardless of whether it is connected to a secure network or not," CEO Gianni Cuozzo told TechCrunch. The Rome-based company has been doubling down on this approach. Its latest product, Photon, is a runtime security solution designed to prevent attacks at the kernel level of a device.
This approach requires close partnership with manufacturers β something Exein says it has prioritized since its founding in 2018. According to Cuozzo, the decision to work directly with OEMs and silicon vendors was driven by the conviction that connected devices were on the rise.
That bet has created significant tailwinds. Exein claims to have secured more than 2 billion connected devices across sectors where cyberattacks could be paralyzing, including aerospace, industrial automation, automotive manufacturing, energy, healthcare, and semiconductors.
Riding the Physical AI Wave
The startup expects its growth to be sustained by the rise of physical AI, which relies on the same supply chain. Cuozzo noted that his product can cover AI-powered robots, drones, self-driving cars, sensors, smart appliances, and other connected devices running models on the edge.
Investors appear to agree. Exein says its latest round was significantly oversubscribed. The company's valuation has increased thirty-fold since its Series B roughly two years ago, and more than doubled since it secured equity and debt in December 2025 following its Series C earlier last year.
AI-Powered Attacks and a Foundational Model Response
Beyond valuations, AI has also boosted attackers' capabilities. According to Cuozzo, this is being facilitated by open-source models that can run without guardrails, making it much easier and cheaper to target physical devices in novel ways.
Exein has already seen an increase in what Cuozzo calls "machine-speed attacks," and intends to respond with a foundational model for physical AI security. The company is currently training the model on machine data and telemetrics, and plans to have it ready in the first quarter of 2027.
Expansion Plans
In the meantime, Exein intends to use the fresh funding for M&As to complete its product portfolio, and to hire staff to accelerate its expansion in the U.S. and Asia Pacific, which currently drives half of its revenue.
Cuozzo said being spread across three continents has been Exein's main challenge so far. The breadth of its presence took some adjusting to, but it has borne fruit, he said, noting that the company is "growing 400% year on year."
While such growth numbers are often hard to maintain, Exein could get a hand from the European Union's regulatory push. As physical AI and connected devices proliferate in 2026, the EU's Cyber Resilience Act β which mandates cybersecurity requirements for products with digital elements β is set to create new tailwinds for companies like Exein that build security in at the device level.
via TechCrunch