Octane, which uses AI to identify vulnerabilities in blockchain codebases, has emerged from stealth with $6.75 million in seed funding co-led by Archetype and Winklevoss Capital, both of New York. Other investors in the round included Gemini, Circle, Legion Capital, Druid Ventures, Duke Capital Partners and angel investors such as Balaji Srinivasan and Sina Habibian.
The California cybersecurity startup focuses on helping blockchain firms avoid fraud by identifying and fixing vulnerabilities in blockchain codebases and smart contracts that are routinely exploited by hackers to siphon off cryptocurrency.
“Flawed blockchain code enables billions in theft across crypto, with vulnerable smart contracts creating an ever-expanding attack surface as more value enters the ecosystem,” said Octane CEO Giovanni Vignone, who previously was a founding blockchain engineer at Mural. “Octane’s AI continuously scans codebases, empowering developers with proactive threat detection and one-click fixes throughout the entire development lifecycle — eliminating vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them.”
According to Vignone, many blockchain teams make investments of up to seven-figures annually on security, yet the industry suffered “over $11 billion in hacks.” Octane plans to use the funds to increase product development velocity, expand its staff and mass-label vulnerability data.
“Securing smart contracts on the blockchain is one of the biggest challenges facing any crypto developer,” said Tyler Winklevoss, who along with his brother Cameron, runs the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange. “Octane allows devs to battle-test their smart contract code with AI-powered security testing before it hits production on the blockchain.”
“The importance of making crypto applications more secure is obvious and Gio and his world-class team have built just the platform to meet this need and help crypto devs and crypto companies ship more secure code,” said Cameron Winklevoss.
“By leveraging LLMs to identify attack surfaces before deployment, we believe Octane expands the crypto security purview beyond traditional audits and does so with a developer-first mentality,” said Ash Egan, general partner at Archetype.
