BOSTON, April 21, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — SpartanX, the AI-native offensive security company behind the industry’s first fully autonomous full-stack red teaming platform, today announced the close of its seed round led by Venture Guides, with participation from additional angel and corporate investors. Alongside the funding, the company has established its new Global Headquarters in Boston and appointed a new President and Chief Operating Officer to lead the scaling of its sales, marketing, and customer success teams.
A Partnership Built to Lead
The round was led by Venture Guides, a Boston-based venture capital firm focused exclusively on early-stage security, AI, cloud infrastructure, and data companies. Venture Guides has guided portfolio companies to more than 80% positive outcomes, with over 40% achieving multi-billion-dollar valuations, including Dynatrace, SolarWinds, LinkedIn and DocuSign.
Venture Guides operates on a fundamentally different model from traditional venture capital. The firm maintains a concentrated portfolio of 15 investments and commits 10% or more of personal capital to its funds. Every partner is actively involved in guiding portfolio companies across business strategy, finance, go-to-market execution, and product positioning on a weekly basis.
“SpartanX has built something truly unique in offensive security. A fully autonomous platform where 500+ AI agents coordinate across every attack surface, validate findings with real exploits, and deliver remediation in one continuous workflow,” said Anton Simunovic, Partner at Venture Guides. “The founding team’s deep domain experience, from building and exiting past security companies to securing platforms at the scale of Uber, provides that rare combination of both understanding and solving the customers’ pain through product vision. We are proud to partner with them.”
Scaling for Growth: New HQ and Executive Leadership
SpartanX has established its new Global Headquarters in Boston, positioning the company at the center of one of the world’s leading cybersecurity and enterprise technology ecosystems. The company is actively hiring and excited to bring new jobs to the Boston area, tapping into the region’s deep talent pool to accelerate its mission to make autonomous full-stack red teaming accessible to organizations of all sizes.
As part of this expansion, SpartanX has appointed Erik Hardy as President and Chief Operating Officer. Hardy brings over 25 years of progressive experience leading enterprise software and SaaS companies, with deep expertise in scaling go-to-market teams across global, strategic, and mid-market segments. In his new role, Hardy will lead SpartanX’s field operations, encompassing sales, marketing, customer success, and support, as the company moves from early access into broader market availability.
The Platform
SpartanX deploys more than 500 AI-powered offensive agents that operate simultaneously across six critical attack surfaces: web applications, APIs and source code, networks, cloud infrastructure, IAM and identity, and AI systems, agents and LLMs. Every finding is exploit-validated with proof, and every attack chain is mapped end-to-end, without human intervention. Beyond discovery, 100+ specialized agents handle triage, automated code-level fix generation, and compliance mapping to SOC2, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and more.
“After years of leading red team engagements and penetration tests firsthand, building and exiting cybersecurity companies, I knew the industry needed something fundamentally different. Having Venture Guides as a true partner, has helped catalyze decades of our team’s offensive security experience into the cutting-edge technology we launched today,” said Diego Spahn, Co-Founder and CEO of SpartanX. “Together, we are in the strongest possible position to lead the market and define a new category in AI-powered autonomous red teaming.”
SpartanX is currently accepting early access requests at www.spartanx.ai.
About SpartanX
SpartanX is an AI-native offensive security company building the next generation of autonomous full-stack red teaming. The platform combines 500+ AI agents with coverage across six attack surfaces, exploit validation, and automated remediation to deliver continuous security testing without human bottlenecks. Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
For more information, visit www.spartanx.ai.
About Venture Guides
Venture Guides is a Boston-based venture capital firm providing active guidance for early-stage security, AI, cloud infrastructure, and data companies. With decades of experience building successful enterprise software companies, Venture Guides accelerates its portfolio with proven, team-based expertise and deep domain knowledge.
For more information, visit www.ventureguides.com.
Media Contact: SpartanX Communications press@spartanx.ai
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