Amsterdam-based cybersecurity startup Dawnguard has announced the public launch of its security architecture automation platform, alongside an additional €2.8 million ($3.3 million) in pre-Seed funding. The round came from existing investor BNVT Capital in the UK, with new participation from Curiosity VC in the Netherlands and eCAPITAL in Germany. According to the company, the fresh capital brings Dawnguard’s total funding to more than €5.5 million ($6.3 million). This comes one year after they emerged from stealth with €2.6 million in pre-Seed funding – as covered by EU-Startups. “Cybersecurity has become trapped in an endless cycle of detection, response, and patching,” says Mahdi Abdulrazak, CEO and co-founder of Dawnguard. “For twenty years, security was something you added later. That model was already fragile. Today, against an attacker running at machine speed, it becomes increasingly indefensible. When probing is continuous and cheap, the only thing that holds is what was designed correctly from the start.” Dawnguard’s additional pre-Seed round comes amid continued 2026 activiy of European companies working on cybersecurity automation, AI-agent security, cloud infrastructure security, software supply-chain protection and adjacent digital identity infrastructure. Relevant rounds reported this year include Cloudsmith’s €61.5 million Series C for AI-driven software supply-chain security, Geordie AI’s €25 million Series A for AI-agent governance, NeuralTrust’s €17.2 million Seed round for enterprise AI-agent security, Escape’s €15.4 million Series A for offensive security engineering, and Cloudgeni’s €858k raise for secure cloud infrastructure automation. In the Netherlands, Amsterdam-based Duna raised €30 million for AI-native business identity and onboarding, an adjacent trust-infrastructure segment. Taken together, adjacent 2026 rounds represent approximately €224 million in funding, indicating active investor interest in security tooling that moves beyond reactive monitoring towards earlier-stage design, governance, identity and infrastructure controls. “Every engineering team understands the gap between what was designed and what ultimately gets deployed,” adds Kim