Cybersecurity startup Backslash Security has secured $19 million (approximately 273.6 billion Korean won) in Series A funding to address emerging cyber threats and expand its technological capabilities. The funding will be used to expand its R&D team, upgrade its platform, and increase sales in the US and European markets.
Founded in 2022, Backslash focuses on protecting against a new threat face known as "ambient coding," which has emerged with the surge in the use of AI coding agents and development tools. The company's platform enables security teams to oversee the entire process of software generation, modification, and deployment within an AI-based workflow.
Traditional security solutions typically focus on vulnerabilities in individual tools, while Backslash adopts an integrated approach across the entire development environment technology stack. It covers the entire AI development lifecycle, including integrated development environments, autonomous AI agents, model context protocol servers, and prompt-based workflows, and addresses development context-based threats often overlooked by traditional application security solutions.
This platform is particularly capable of analyzing AI coding activity across the entire organization in real time and supports setting consistent security safeguards across various tools. Its core competitive advantage lies in its ability to detect and respond to AI-based anomalies such as malicious code injection or API vulnerabilities in real time, without impacting development speed.
Backslash co-founder and CEO Shahar Mann emphasized, "Enterprise software development has shifted towards an AI-centric approach, and developers and management have embraced this trend. However, security must not take a backseat in this transformation." He added, "Only when security teams gain visibility and control over the entire technology stack can enterprises maintain the security of their infrastructure and applications as they transition to AI-driven development."
This funding round was led by KOMPAS VC, with participation from Maniv Mobility, Artofin Venture Capital, StageOne Ventures, and First Rays Capital. Talia Rafael, Partner at KOMPAS VC, commented, "AI is transforming the way software is developed across the entire industry and even the security paradigm itself. Backslash provides a dedicated platform that can proactively address this change."
Backslash, which has raised a total of $27 million (approximately 388.8 billion Korean won) in funding, is gaining attention as a company setting new security standards in the rapidly evolving AI development ecosystem. In an era where AI software is becoming mainstream, the market has higher expectations for its efforts to simultaneously meet the conflicting demands of development speed and security.
