December 18, 2025

Securing the Invisible Edge: Announcing our Investment in Exein

Written by
Will Horyn

We are living in an era where the definition of “infrastructure” has fundamentally shifted. Today, infrastructure includes the billions of connected devices—from industrial controllers and medical equipment to automotive ECUs and smart city sensors—that power the physical world.

As investors, we constantly look for companies that not only identify a massive structural shift in technology but possess the proprietary innovation to capitalize on it. That is why we are thrilled to announce our investment in Exein, the company defining the future of embedded cybersecurity.

Exein is building an immune system for the edge, leveraging advanced technologies like Rust, eBPF, and edge AI to provide security that is native, autonomous, and efficient. We believe Exein is poised to become the standard-bearer for the next generation of cybersecurity.

The Perfect Storm: Market Tailwinds

The embedded security market is benefitting from a convergence of multiple tailwinds, including explosive connected device growth, new regulatory requirements, increased cybersecurity threats, and geopolitical shifts toward technological sovereignty:

Explosion of the Attack Surface: The number of connected IoT devices surpassed the number of non-IoT devices (such as desktop computers, smartphones, laptops, and tablets) in 2020 and is projected to roughly double over the next five years from 21 billion today to 39 billion in 2030. Every single one of these devices represents a potential entry point for attackers, and the vast majority have no built-in protections at all. Traditional cybersecurity solutions, which are often network-centric and reactive, are too heavy and too slow for the resource-constrained environments of embedded systems. You cannot install a standard enterprise endpoint protection agent on a microcontroller operating on milliwatts of power. The market needs a solution designed specifically for the physics of the edge.
Regulatory Tipping Point: Security is no longer a “nice-to-have” feature in connected devices—it is becoming a legal requirement. We are seeing a global push for accountability in digital products. In Europe, the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is setting strict standards for digital goods, effectively barring unsecure devices from the market. Similarly, the FCC in the United States is advancing the Cyber Trust Mark, a labeling program to help consumers make informed decisions about device security. Exein is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this compliance push. Their Analyzer platform (agentless firmware scanner) can conduct regulatory compliance checks (in addition to broader vulnerability scans), transforming it from a security posture tool into a powerful engine for meeting standards like the CRA, RED (radio equipment), IEC 62443 (industrial automation & control), and ISO 26262 (auto).
Surge in Sophisticated Threats: It’s not just the volume of devices that is changing—the threat landscape is becoming exponentially more dangerous as well. We are witnessing a 400% year-over-year increase in IoT-targeted malware attacks. Bad actors are no longer just looking for open ports, they are weaponizing AI to create sophisticated malware and utilizing botnets to hijack unsecured devices for massive DDoS attacks. Unpatched firmware is responsible for 60% of all IoT security breaches, creating a built-in demand for solutions that can protect devices throughout their lifecycle. In critical sectors like healthcare, where device failure is not an option, a single breach now costs an average of $10 million.
From Cloud-First to Cloud-Smart: We are witnessing a strategic rebalancing from public cloud-centric architectures back to hybrid, on-prem, and edge computing, driven by geopolitical tensions and the need for technological sovereignty. Data centers and critical infrastructure run on Linux, and Exein’s host-based approach is perfectly suited to enable sovereign entities to have more control in protecting these high-frequency, data-critical environments.

The Exein Difference: Technology That Fits

Exein’s product approach solves the “security vs. performance” trade-off that has plagued the embedded industry for decades:

Rust and eBPF: Exein’s technology stack is built on Rust, ensuring memory safety and high performance, and eBPF (Extended Berkeley Packet Filter). eBPF is key, allowing Exein to run sandboxed programs within the operating system kernel, safely extending its capabilities without changing source code or risking stability. This provides unparalleled visibility into system calls, file system access, and network activity with negligible overhead—often as low as 1% CPU usage and <100 mb of memory allocation.
Runtime Security (the “Immune System” approach): Most legacy solutions rely on static analysis, i.e. checking the code before it ships. While Exein offers this capability via Exein Analyzer, the real magic happens with Exein Runtime. This is a continuous monitoring solution that lives on the device. It doesn’t just watch; it reacts. Using a combination of defined policies and real-time analysis, Exein Runtime can block suspicious operations—like unauthorized file modifications or malicious network connections—as they occur across a range of environments.
AI at the Edge: Exein deploys proprietary, distilled AI models for anomaly detection directly on the device, allowing systems to identify unknown or “zero-day” threats based on behavioral patterns rather than just known signatures. Furthermore, they are leveraging LLMs to provide “security intelligence,” helping human operators understand incident context and recommend remediation steps, effectively bridging the skills gap in cybersecurity teams. They benefit from a massive data advantage given their years of research in this space and existing install base of devices, enabling them to integrate the latest threat detection and response data back into their proprietary models.

Ecosystem and Traction

Exein has taken a highly opinionated approach to embed itself deep into the manufacturing supply chain as far upstream as the chipset manufacturers, resulting in a significant distribution advantage.

Strategic Integrations: Exein has secured partnerships that make their technology the default choice:

Yocto Project: Yocto is the open standard for building firmware on Linux-based connected devices and powers billions of devices globally. Exein is a strategic partner to Yocto and since Release 5.0 (April 2024), the Exein Security Metalayer has been included as a default compatible layer, making adoption frictionless for developers.
Chipset Manufacturers: Exein has partnered with leading IoT chipset manufacturers such as MediaTek (powering 2B devices annually) to natively integrate into their platform, positioning Exein as the default security layer from the start.
Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs): Exein works directly with industry stalwarts like Kontron, AAEON, and SECO to integrate security into their upstream components before they flow to OEMs like Bosch, Siemens, or Daikin, enabling the OEMs to more easily establish a cybersecurity standard across all of their devices and suppliers.

This “secure by design” approach means that for many manufacturers, using Exein isn’t an arduous integration project—it’s a feature they can simply turn on.

Market Reception

The metrics speak for themselves. Exein is already protecting one billion devices at runtime and has uncovered millions of high severity vulnerabilities. They are working with Fortune 500 companies across many sectors including automotive, industrial automation, and energy, driving explosive topline growth of 5x this year with best-in-class efficiency.

A New Cybersecurity Standard

Each technological shift yields a generational new cybersecurity leader (e.g. in Network, EDR, Cloud, and Identity), and as connected IoT devices continue to proliferate alongside increasing cyber threats, Exein is positioned to be the standard-bearer for the age of secure connected devices.

As Founder & CEO Gianni Cuozzo says, “Exein was born to make this vision a reality: transforming every connected device into a fortress of security, forging the largest decentralized immune system for digital life cross-vendor, cross-platform, and cross-system. We stand as the first line of defense between the boundless digital world and the physical one we live in, empowering manufacturers to build inherently safe innovations and already safeguarding over one billion devices worldwide.”

As the world rushes to connect everything, the risk of cyber-physical attacks grows exponentially. Exein provides the shield that allows innovation to continue safely. We are proud to back a team that is not just predicting the future of embedded security but is actively writing the code that secures it.

Welcome to the Geodesic portfolio, Team Exein!