EP34 - Aikido Security — from zero to unicorn (DevSecOps, AI & freemium)
About this episode
How Aikido Security consolidated SAST, SCA, CSPM and DAST into a single developer-first platform, pushed on AI with AutoFix, Intel and autonomous pentests, and reached 1 billion dollars in valuation with a 60 million dollar Series B — becoming Belgium's cybersecurity unicorn.
Founded in 2022 in Ghent by Willem Delbare, Roeland Delrue and Felix Garriau, Aikido Security is born from the observation that the application security market is fragmented across dozens of specialized tools — one for code vulnerabilities (SAST), one for open source dependencies (SCA), one for cloud posture (CSPM), one for dynamic tests (DAST) — that development teams don't have time or budget to use all of them. Aikido replaces them with a single platform, calibrated for the developer workflow.
In this episode we analyze the freemium PLG (Product-Led Growth) model that brings developers to try Aikido autonomously before the enterprise buying team gets involved; the OSS strategy with Opengrep (Semgrep fork) that builds credibility in the community; and the AI AutoFix product that closes the loop between vulnerability detection and automatic remediation. We discuss competition with Snyk, GitHub Advanced Security and Wiz, and why developer experience has become the primary selection criterion for security tools in tech-first companies. An episode for anyone who wants to understand how to scale a security business from zero.
What you learn from this episode
- Freemium in IDE riduce il time-to-first-value
- OSS come leva GTM (Opengrep/Intel)
- AI Autofix: chiudere il loop detection→remediation
Featured startup: Aikido Security
Aikido Security
European cybersecurity company providing vulnerability management and application security solutions for developers.
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