Italian firm Exein becomes a unicorn: valued at $1.7 billion
The Rome-based company has announced a new $270 million funding round
Key points
The Italian tech firm Exein, which develops cybersecurity solutions to protect the software running in devices, cars, robots and machinery, today announced a new funding round of $270 million. The Rome-based company focuses on the security of so-called ‘physical AI’ – artificial intelligence that is not limited to generating content but is embedded in objects and systems capable of interacting with the physical world. This new funding round follows the $170 million raised by the Rome-based company raised in 2025.
The valuation now stands at $1.7 billion, a figure that marks its entry into the ‘tech unicorns’ club (i.e. companies valued at over a billion) and places it amongst the most valuable cybersecurity start-ups in Europe. The funding will accelerate Exein’s expansion into the United States and the Asia-Pacific region and strengthen its position in Physical AI security: the protection of intelligent machines that use AI to perceive, make decisions and act in the physical world, from robots and drones to autonomous vehicles.
The funding round is led by the US-based fund Headline, with participation from Sofina, Goldman Sachs, the European Investment Bank (via ETCI – European Tech Champions Initiative), KfW Capital and T.Capital (Deutsche Telekom’s corporate venture capital arm), and with existing investors Balderton, HV, Intrepid Growth Partners, 33N, Lakestar, Supernova Invest, Blue Cloud Venture and Geodesic Capital. The round was heavily oversubscribed, the company explains in a statement.
In addition to this, the existing revolving credit facility led by J.P. Morgan has been extended, with KfW joining as an additional lender.
What is Physical AI
Exein is developing a new AI-based security solution to protect robots, autonomous machines and Physical AI systems. Having launched Photon, a technology that blocks malicious attacks directly at the kernel level before they can cause damage, the company is also creating a proprietary foundation model trained on telemetry from over 2 billion devices.
