Exein raises $270M at $1.7B to secure Physical AI machines

Rome-based runtime cybersecurity company Exein said on its company blog it raised $270 million at a $1.7 billion valuation, led by Headline, to expand in the US and Asia-Pacific and build security for robots, drones, vehicles, and other machines that use AI to act in the physical world. The company says the oversubscribed round also backs a foundation model for Physical AI security trained on telemetry from more than two billion devices.

A large European cybersecurity raise aimed at machines that can move and act, not just leak data. The company itself published the round the same day, after the story sat on HOLD waiting for Exein’s own announcement.

Exein, a Rome-based runtime cybersecurity company, published “Exein raises $270m at $1.7bn valuation to build the security layer for Physical AI” on its company blog on 15 Sep 2026. Runtime security means protection while software is running, not only a scan before it starts. The company said it raised $270 million in new funding at a $1.7 billion valuation — a unicorn, in the usual sense: a private company valued at $1 billion or more. That company blog is the filing event. These are company claims.

The round was led by Headline, the company said. Participants it named: Sofina, Goldman Sachs, EIB Group through the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI), KfW Capital, and T.Capital; plus existing investors Balderton, HV, Intrepid Growth Partners, 33N Ventures, Lakestar, Supernova Invest, Blue Cloud Ventures, and Geodesic Capital. The company said the round closed significantly oversubscribed.

Use of proceeds, as the company frames it: expansion in the United States and Asia-Pacific, and a security layer for Physical AI — robots, drones, vehicles, and other machines that use AI to act in the physical world, not just chatbots that write text.

Founder and CEO Gianni Cuozzo, quoted on the company blog: AI is “moving out of the cloud and into the physical world,” and this is the transition Exein was built for. One product he points to is Photon, a preemptive runtime the company says it launched earlier this year that runs at the kernel level — the kernel is the core of an operating system — to stop malicious code before it runs. Quoted: “Attacks now happen at machine speed, so defense has to as well.”.

Company claim, not an independent audit: Exein says it is seeing around 5,000 new, non-repetitive attacks a week across a network of two billion devices — five times last year’s volume — as attackers use AI against machines that make real-world decisions. File 5,000, two billion, and 5x as Exein’s figures.

Company roadmap: a proprietary foundation model for Physical AI security trained on two years of machine telemetry — live data on how machines actually behave — from more than two billion devices. The company says that model will power autonomous security agents, that an agentic security architecture ships by the end of 2026, and that the first foundation models are expected in the first quarter of 2027.

Clarey Zhu, a partner at Headline, quoted on the same company blog: as AI moves into robots, vehicles, and critical infrastructure, securing the physical world will become one of the defining cybersecurity challenges of the next decade, and Exein’s “deep expertise in embedded systems and unique machine data” is the advantage as it scales. It is an investor line, not a desk forecast.

Alongside the equity, the company said it is upsizing a revolving credit facility — a reusable loan line — led by J.P. Morgan, with KfW joining as an additional lender, to back mergers and acquisitions in Europe and the United States.

Geographic expansion, still the company’s: an Asia-Pacific headquarters in Taiwan; a legal entity in Japan, with expansion there planned for the fourth quarter of 2026; a South Korea office by 2027; and U.S. Team growth plus a new Bay Area office.