Asymmetric Security

Asymmetric Security is a digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) company that describes itself as the first AI-native firm in the category. It combines human forensic analysts with in-house AI systems and frontier AI models to collect and analyze evidence during cybersecurity incidents, with the stated aim of reducing investigation time and cost relative to traditional DFIR providers.

The service workflow advertised by the company covers 24/7 analyst availability and incident intake, a scoping call led by a DFIR lead, initial findings and containment guidance within 24 hours, and post-investigation threat hunts and configuration reviews. Platform capabilities described at launch include autonomous "rapid log pulls" of evidence across email, identity and cloud applications, AI-driven analysis of large volumes of data points to reconstruct attack timelines and scope, human-in-the-loop validation in which expert responders review findings and adjudicate edge cases and risk, and defensive recommendations to prevent repeat attacks.

The company's initial focus is business email compromise (BEC) investigations, with stated plans to expand into insider threat investigations, ransomware and nation-state attacks. It also builds evaluations, benchmarks and learning environments derived from real-world attacks, both to improve its own models and, it says, to contribute to frontier AI labs' cyberdefense capabilities. Its stated mission is to "accelerate AI cyberdefense" ahead of what it frames as the security challenges of the AGI era.

Founding story

Asymmetric Security was founded in 2025 by Zainab Ali Majid, Alexis Carlier and Pippa Thompson. The founders' framing centers on the observation that security operations centers lack analytic capacity — most of the thousands of alerts received get only surface-level review and only a small fraction are deeply investigated — and that manual BEC investigations typically require 40+ hours of reading emails and logs. They argue automated digital forensics can make deep investigation ubiquitous and reduce the number of attacks that go undetected.

Business model

Services-led model: the company sells expert-delivered incident response and forensic investigation engagements that are executed on its own AI platform. Susa Ventures characterized the investment as an expression of a "full-stack AI services thesis," in which the services business is viewed as both a standalone revenue line and a distribution channel into the enterprise security market.

Fee-based professional services for forensic investigations and incident response engagements, with additional post-investigation offerings including threat hunts and configuration reviews. Sources do not disclose pricing, contract structure or revenue figures.

Traction

At launch in January 2026 the company said its platform had already accelerated responses for more than 100 attacks. Its pre-seed round was described as oversubscribed. No revenue, customer names or headcount figures are disclosed in the available sources.

Latest developments

On 21-22 January 2026 the company emerged from stealth with a $4.2 million pre-seed round led by Susa Ventures, with Halcyon Ventures, Overlook Ventures and angels including Charlie Songhurst, Matt Clifford and Geoff Ralston. Funds are being used to hire across engineering and incident response, with planned service expansion into insider threat, ransomware and nation-state investigations.