Fortaegis Raises $50 Million to Scale Chip-Based Security for AI Systems

Fortaegis, a Dutch startup building chip-based security technology, has raised an oversubscribed $50 million Series A led by Singapore's Serendipity Capital, with participation from TEL Venture Capital (the venture arm of chip-equipment maker Tokyo Electron), NP-Hard Ventures, NovaCapital, Access Ventures, and Coalition Capital, alongside individual investors including Quantinuum founder and Fortaegis chairman Ilyas Khan.

The company's technology uses the unique physical properties of individual chips to generate encryption keys, securing the networks that connect AI systems, defense equipment, satellites, and autonomous machines at the hardware level rather than relying solely on software-based security. Fortaegis plans to begin commercial manufacturing of its field-programmable gate array products in 2027, with deployment planned across the US, Europe, Singapore, and Japan.

A security layer built for the AI infrastructure buildout

As AI systems increasingly control physical infrastructure, defense hardware, satellites, and autonomous machinery, the security question shifts from protecting data to protecting the hardware layer those systems run on. Fortaegis is positioning its chip-level approach as infrastructure for that shift specifically, rather than a general-purpose cybersecurity product, which explains an investor syndicate weighted toward manufacturing, defense, and critical infrastructure expertise rather than typical enterprise software investors.

Why oversubscribed rounds matter in deep tech specifically

An oversubscribed Series A is a meaningful signal in any category, but especially so in hardware-security and deep tech, where diligence cycles tend to run longer and involve more specialized technical review than a typical software round. Investors need real conviction in a technology's physical claims, not just its market thesis, before committing capital to a category with a 2027 commercial manufacturing timeline still ahead of it. A syndicate this large choosing to compete for allocation in a round that hasn't shipped a commercial product yet suggests the underlying technology cleared an unusually high technical bar during diligence.

What this means for founders

Fortaegis's syndicate, spanning a Japanese chip-equipment maker's venture arm, defense-focused investors, and individual backers with deep manufacturing and geopolitical expertise, illustrates a broader pattern in hardware-security fundraising: the most valuable investors aren't always the ones writing the largest checks, they're the ones who bring domain-specific credibility that a pure financial investor can't replicate. For founders building infrastructure-layer security products, assembling a syndicate around genuine domain expertise, even in smaller individual checks, can matter more for later enterprise and government sales cycles than round size alone.

Deep tech and infrastructure security investors can be filtered on the investor directory, and the free investor matching tool scores fit against hardware-heavy, infrastructure-layer businesses. Background on how strategic and financial investors combine in a single round is in the glossary entry on syndicate structures. Currently live raises are on the live listings page, and broader deep tech funding activity is tracked on the newsroom.

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