Stairwell

Stairwell is a cybersecurity company that builds a file-centric threat detection, investigation, and response platform. Its approach is to collect and permanently preserve every executable observed in a customer environment, analyze the files themselves rather than relying on other tools to flag them first, and continuously re-examine the accumulated history whenever new intelligence becomes available. The company positions the product as an "AI SOC" and describes capabilities including autonomous detection with verdicts on new executables, continuous retro-hunting across years of stored file history, blast-radius mapping that traces copies and variants (renamed, recompiled, or mutated) across hosts and time, and closing investigations with campaign reports mapped to MITRE plus recommended containment, blocking, and cleanup actions to be executed via a customer's existing tools.

The current product is branded Backstory, alongside Stairwell Intelligent Analysis (SIA), a file-analysis capability offered on the company's website that returns a malicious-or-benign verdict on an uploaded executable in under 200 seconds without signup or a sandbox. SIA supports a wide range of file types with optimization for executables and scripts. Earlier company materials described the flagship product as the Inception platform, providing continuous intelligence, detection, and response. Documentation covers onboarding, AI triage, opinions, variants and sightings, asset management, and a file forwarder for Windows and Linux, along with integrations for CrowdStrike, Splunk, and SentinelOne.

Stairwell states company values around practical excellence, diversity of perspectives, delivering products over promises, and curiosity, and describes its team as distributed. Leadership includes CEO Emmy Linder (formerly COO at Cybereason, Principal at BCG, and a veteran of IDF Unit 8200), Founder and CTO Mike Wiacek (co-founder and CSO of Alphabet's Chronicle and founder of Google's Threat Analysis Group), Head of Product Julian Matossian (previously at Nisos, Sophos, Cylance, and WatchGuard), and Chief of Staff Sarah Case (previously at Wayfair and the New England Venture Capital Association).

Founding story

Stairwell was founded by Mike Wiacek, who previously co-founded and served as CSO of Alphabet's Chronicle and founded Google's Threat Analysis Group. The company describes itself as comprised of security industry leaders and engineers from Google.

Business model

Stairwell sells its platform to enterprise security organizations through a sales-led motion, with demo requests and enterprise sales contacts as the primary entry points, and also works with managed security service providers such as Cyderes to reach customers.

Enterprise software sold to security teams; the company's materials point to sales-qualified engagement ("Book a Demo," "Contact Sales") rather than self-serve purchase, and a free web-based file analysis tool is offered without signup.

Traction

Stairwell has stated its Inception platform was used by a number of Fortune 500 companies, and a third-party profile lists customers including Fox News, Cyderes, Mandiant, and Sanofi. Total disclosed funding reached $69.5 million as of October 2022, and headcount doubled following the close of the Series B.

Latest developments

The company currently markets Backstory, described as an AI investigator that continuously collects and preserves executables, detects threats, runs investigations, and directs existing security tools to respond, with recommended actions and MITRE-mapped campaign reports. It also offers Stairwell Intelligent Analysis, a public file-upload analysis tool returning verdicts in under 200 seconds, with expanded support for archives, documents, and images described as in development. Leadership now lists Emmy Linder as CEO, Mike Wiacek as Founder and CTO, Julian Matossian as Head of Product, and Sarah Case as Chief of Staff.