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

“Our industry treats security as a checkbox. It’s broken,” said Mahdi Abdulrazak, CEO of Dawnguard. “We built Dawnguard because security needs to be part of the system’s DNA from the start, not an afterthought. This is about aligning intent with reality, and giving teams the tools to enforce that alignment at the earliest stage and long after deployment.”

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 experience running 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.

“Dawnguard closes the gap between design and reality,” said Kim van Lavieren. “We’re giving teams the power to translate security intent into enforceable code so they don’t have to rely on spreadsheets, static docs, or guesswork.”

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.

“Dawnguard isn’t just building tech — they’re rewriting the DNA of cybersecurity. In a world addicted to patching symptoms, they’ve chosen to re-engineer the root. That’s not just bold — it’s necessary,” said Dimitri van Zantvliet, Dutch Railways CISO & Chair Dutch CISO Community, and a Dawnguard investor and advisor.

"Hundreds of security tools overwhelm CISOs with promises of better detection, yet few tackle the root issue: design flaws in code that AI-driven threats exploit. As attacks grow smarter, defenses must shift left—embedding resilience at the codebase. We are excited to back Dawnguard, who build protection by design, not patch by necessity," said Chris Corbishley, Managing Partner 9900 Capital.

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.

“With software moving faster than ever, security can’t be stuck in the past,” Abdulrazak said. “We’re creating the platform that makes secure architecture not just possible, but inevitable.”