London-based cybersecurity startup, Mindgard, which specialises in AI security tools, has garnered significant attention in the financial sector with its recent funding success.
The company announced that it has secured a seed financing of £3m, according to a report from UKTN. The funds came from esteemed investors IQ Capital and Lakestar.
Mindgard, a brainchild of Lancaster University, has developed a pioneering platform that allows businesses to rigorously test the security of their AI models. What sets them apart is their claim that their platform can interoperate with “almost any” existing cybersecurity system.
The company is aiming to capitalise on the surging popularity of large language models (LLMs) which power advanced chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard.
Established just last year by Garraghan, Steve Street, and Dr Neeraj Suri, Mindgard’s foundation is deeply rooted in academic research from Lancaster University. The firm’s credentials are further solidified with its memberships in Nvidia’s Inception Programme and the Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub.
Mindgard CEO Dr Peter Garraghan commented, “Today’s businesses are rapidly embracing LLMs and other AI technologies. Although these enterprises understand the need to secure their AI assets, the cybersecurity that worked for them in the past won’t help guard their AI against the next generation of cyber threats.”
Additionally, Archie Muirhead, a partner at IQ Capital, shared his thoughts on the endeavour, “With Mindgard’s platform, the complexity of model assessment is made easy and actionable through integrations into common MLOps and SecOps tools and an ever-growing attack library.”
In the broader investment landscape, IQ Capital, based in London and Cambridge, had previously made headlines in June with its £320m raise, focusing on the deep tech sector. Similarly, Lakestar, a Swiss venture capital entity, led a £11m seed round in June for the London-based warehouse robot startup, BotsAndUs.
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