Ex-big tech cyber leaders launch Dawnguard from stealth with $3M to rewrite DNA of cybersecurity

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 inproduction, Dawnguard embeds it at the core of system architecture — ensuring secure,compliant, and scalable designs from the earliest phases of development.

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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 experiencerunning 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.

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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.

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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.

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About Dawnguard

Dawnguard’s mission is to redefine cybersecurity with a platform that enables true shift-left security, from day zero to day 10,000. Dawnguard is a next-generation cybersecurity platform purpose-built for secure-by-design cloud architecture by integrating AI and automation into the earliest phases of system design and throughout the cloud lifecycle.

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About 9900 Capital

9900 Capital is a global investment firm backing category-defining software companies that address the world’s most pressing challenges—from building resilient supply chains to more secure cyber infrastructure. Founded in 2023 by Chris Corbishley (formerly of Hedosophia) and Rory Mounsey-Heysham (formerly of the Bill Gates Foundation), the firm is driven by a philosophy of Benevolent Disruption, which takes a data-driven approach to uncovering extraordinary commercial opportunities that deliver meaningful, systemic change.

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For further information please contact press@dawnguard.ai.