Sydney AI security startup Dam Secure has raised $6.1 million (US$4m) in a Seed round led by Washington, DC-based cybersecurity and AI investor, Paladin Capital Group.
Dam Secure, founded by Patrick Collins and Simon Harloff, is developing an AI-native platform for organisations to manage the security risks created by the rapid adoption of AI coding tools.
Also supporting the raise were Secure Code Warrior CEO Pieter Danhieux, RecordPoint CEO Anthony Woodward, Innovation Bay founder Phaedon Stough and Tyro Payments chief product officer Steen Andersson.
Collins, a former executive at Zip Co and Secure Code Warrior, previously built and exited US-based mobile technology industry leader, 5th Finger. He said AI systems frequently produce code that functions correctly, yet fails basic security expectations and existing security tools dangerous logic flaws introduced by AI-generated code.
“Enterprises are rushing to adopt AI to increase developer velocity, but the volume of software being produced is overwhelming traditional application security processes,” Collins said.
“Industry research shows that, when not explicitly constrained, large language models introduce vulnerabilities in up to half of generated code. This creates dangerous ‘logic gaps’ that organizations are largely blind to.
“We are already seeing the cost of this in recent billion-dollar heists and widespread ecosystem attacks. These breaches don’t rely on classic bugs, they exploit valid but flawed logic that existing ‘scan-and-patch’ tools simply cannot see”, said Collins.
The Dam Secure platform is built around an engine that enables organisations to express security requirements in plain English – such as “customer data must be encrypted at rest” – and automatically enforce those rules across large code bases during the software development process.
Paladin Capital MD Mourad Yesayan, who’s joining the startup’s board, said the current approach to application security is struggling to keep pace with generative AI.
“Developers are becoming increasingly reliant on AI-generated code, and Dam Secure is focused on putting guardrails around that workflow,” he said.
The funding will accelerate product development and ramp up go-to-market efforts this year.
