a16z@a16z5h ago

.@ArmadinSecurity is a new company that uses AI agents to attack your network before criminals do, finding real exploitable zero-days and eventually patching them autonomously. Their agents map every service, route, and system from the outside, then re-attack whenever something changes. Since January that's uncovered 90+ zero-days at Fortune 500 companies. Kevin Mandia spent 30 years responding to some of the worst breaches in the world and built Mandiant, now a core part of Google Cloud's security arm. He had no plans to start another company until AI arrived and changed everything: in his words, "everything I did is dead." He joins a16z's David George to talk about why he came back and what Armadin is building. In this conversation, they cover what AI attacks look like today, why nation states hack like a sniper and AI hacks like a drone swarm, and why the only defense fast enough to keep up is one with no humans in the loop. 1:05 "Everything I did is dead" 3:10 AI on offense, AI on defense 4:20 What an AI attack looks like today 7:20 Sniper rounds vs drone swarms 10:25 Map everything, attack what changes 14:35 The problem with pen tests 16:40 90+ zero-days at Fortune 500s 18:35 A bad patch beats an intrusion 20:55 Why humans are too slow for the SOC 24:30 Why the next year in cyber won't be pretty 26:30 How Mythos changed the threat 28:15 Caging the attacker Armadin built 30:05 Open and closed models tied on offense 34:40 AI is finding zero-days on its own 35:45 Mandiant in 2004 vs Armadin in 2026 41:20 Why Armadin retrains sales every week YouTube: https://youtu.be/cJsHel27Z6M @ArmadinSecurity @DavidGeorge83