LBS MBA alumni’s cybersecurity start-up Hadrian raises $40m as AI reshapes offensive security
Amsterdam-based AI security platform Hadrian, co-founded by LBS MBA 2022 alumni Rogier Fischer and Maurice Clin, has raised $40m
Hadrian, the Amsterdam-based agentic AI security platform co-founded by London Business School MBA 2022 alumni Rogier Fischer and Maurice Clin, has closed a $40m funding round, bringing its total capital raised to $65m.
The round was co-led by Forgepoint Capital International and SmartFin, with participation from existing investors HV Capital, Motive Partners, Picus Capital and Oetker Ventures. Hadrian will use the funds to expand across EMEA and the US and to invest further in its engineering and research teams.
From the LBS MBA to the front line of cybersecurity
Rogier Fischer (MBA2022) is Hadrian’s co-founder and CEO, and Maurice Clin (MBA2022), also a graduate of the LBS MBA Class of 2022, is a co-founder alongside Olivier Beg. Four years after graduating, the LBS-educated founders are leading one of Europe’s fastest-growing offensive security companies, with customers that include several Fortune 500 firms.
Fischer and Beg are former teenage ethical hackers turned serial entrepreneurs, and Fischer previously launched one of Europe’s first crypto exchanges. Together with Clin, they built Hadrian to deliver offensive security that works continuously and at scale, giving teams more reach without taking human judgement out of the loop.
“Everyone can see that AI is changing the threat landscape. It might also hold the answer, but most people are focused on automating the wrong bits.” Rogier Fischer, CEO and co-founder, Hadrian (MBA2022)
Fischer says Hadrian has worked with large language models since before they went mainstream, and that the platform was built to emulate hackers’ attack paths so customers can understand their key risks and prioritise security resources accordingly.
A market struggling with noise
The raise comes as AI changes how cyberattacks are carried out. Recent weeks have brought reports of AI agents escaping test environments and compromising systems without human direction. Anthropic has also disclosed that criminal and state-linked groups used its models to automate entire attack chains and write zero-day exploits.
Defenders are struggling to keep pace. Hadrian cites data showing that 87% of organisations still rely on manual penetration testing. More than 70 per cent of security teams say they find it hard to work out which exposures are actually exploitable, and only 0.47 per cent of vulnerability scanner findings proved genuinely exploitable. In other words, around 99.5 per cent of the alerts teams spend time on require no action.
Seeing security “through a hacker’s eyes”
The platform built by the LBS alumni aims to cut through that noise by mapping an organisation’s digital footprint, discovering risks and prioritising remediation. It combines two products:
Atlas continuously maps an organisation’s external attack surface and uses purpose-built AI agents to validate which exposures can really be exploited.
Nova provides agentic penetration testing on demand, which the company says matches human pentesters and goes beyond them.
Because the two share context, security teams can move from continuous monitoring to deeper testing without starting over. Humans set the mission and make the key decisions, while AI provides round-the-clock coverage, repetition and speed. Hadrian says it is the only vendor to combine continuous exposure management and agentic penetration testing in one platform.
Hadrian reports that customers have seen 10x greater visibility into critical risks, 5x ROI compared with manual pentesting, and 80 per cent faster time to resolution. Its clients include McKesson, NBC Universal, Francisco Partners, Total Energies, Amadeus, Leroy Merlin and Damen Shipyard.
Investor and customer perspectives
Damien Henault, Managing Director and Partner at Forgepoint Capital International, said the volume of vulnerabilities leaves teams needing tools that help them “think like AI-armed hackers”, and praised Hadrian’s combination of depth and breadth.
Saumitra Dubey, Partner at SmartFin, pointed to the company’s growing enterprise contract values, global customer base and strong retention, and said the investment supports its ambition to become a global cybersecurity leader and build a nine-figure revenue business.
Customers also welcomed the news. Alessio Setaro, Digital Solutions Leader at Leroy Merlin, said the platform helps the retailer find exposed assets outside its direct control and test them as an attacker would. Hans Quivooij, CISO at Damen Shipyards, said Hadrian replaced periodic assessments with continuous visibility into what an attacker can see and exploit.
About the investors
Forgepoint Capital is a cybersecurity, AI and infrastructure software venture firm founded in 2015. It has over $1.2bn in assets under management and more than 40 portfolio companies, and is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and London, with offices in Madrid and Paris.
SmartFin is a Brussels-based European venture and growth capital firm founded in 2014. It manages over €600m in commitments and backs early- and growth-stage B2B technology companies.
Are you an LBS alumnus or alumna with news to share? Get in touch with the Alumni Relations team.