Exein, a Rome-based cybersecurity company, raised $270 million in a round led by Headline that values the company at $1.7 billion, a 30-fold increase from its Series B two years ago, the company said.
Participating investors include Sofina, Goldman Sachs, the European Investment Bank Group through the European Tech Champions Initiative, KfW Capital and Deutsche Telekom's T.Capital, according to TechCrunch and Il Sole 24 Ore. The round was oversubscribed, and a revolving credit facility led by J.P. Morgan was also extended, with KfW as an additional lender, Il Sole 24 Ore reported.
Founded in 2018, Exein built its business securing internet-of-things devices and has pivoted toward what it calls physical AI: artificial intelligence embedded in machinery, vehicles and robots that interact with the physical world. Its Photon product runs kernel-level security directly on edge devices rather than relying on network protection, the company said.
CEO Gianni Cuozzo said the company is growing 400% year over year and plans to release a foundational model for physical AI security in the first quarter of 2027. "Control must be shifted below the agent, into the device's operating system," Cuozzo said, arguing safeguards need to sit at the hardware level rather than in the AI system itself.
As robotics and industrial AI move from pilots to production, Exein's raise is a bet that security for physical AI gets sold as its own layer, the way endpoint security became its own market alongside cloud software.