Founded in 2024 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, XBOW is an AI-driven cybersecurity startup that is transforming how modern organizations protect software and systems against threats in the era of artificial intelligence. The company’s mission is simple yet ambitious: to scale offensive security at machine speed and empower defenders with autonomous tools capable of finding and validating vulnerabilities faster and more thoroughly than ever before.
At its core, XBOW is built around an AI-powered penetration testing platform that automates the traditionally manual, labor-intensive process of security testing. This enables organizations to continuously assess their attack surface, discover critical vulnerabilities, and get actionable results in hours rather than weeks — a breakthrough for development teams operating at modern software delivery velocity.
Origins and Leadership
XBOW was founded by Oege de Moor, a seasoned computer scientist and AI expert whose career spans academia and groundbreaking work in developer tools. Before XBOW, de Moor was a professor at Oxford and later co-founded Semmle, which became GitHub Advanced Security, and GitHub Copilot — one of the first successful large-scale applications of generative AI. His vision for XBOW combines these deep technical roots in AI and software security to create autonomous offensive capabilities that extend far beyond traditional tools.
Under de Moor’s leadership, XBOW has assembled a team of top offensive security engineers and AI researchers, many with backgrounds at GitHub and other leading technology companies, creating a collective expertise that underpins the company’s rapid advances in autonomous security testing.
What XBOW Does: Autonomous Penetration Testing
Traditional penetration testing — where human experts manually probe systems for security weaknesses — has long been the industry standard. While effective, it’s slow, expensive, and often reactive, leaving gaps between tests that attackers can exploit. XBOW flips this model on its head with AI-driven automation that continuously performs offensive security work without human intervention.
The platform’s autonomous agents act like hundreds of parallel hackers in software, scanning applications, identifying attack surfaces, and attempting real exploit paths. These agents don’t just look for theoretical vulnerabilities; they attempt exploitation and validate findings — generating reproducible proof-of-concepts that security teams can act on immediately.
XBOW’s autonomous capabilities mean organizations can:
- Discover vulnerabilities across their entire attack surface — including REST APIs, web apps, and backend services.
- Perform on-demand pentests without scheduling delays or expensive external consultants.
- Validate findings with working exploit traces, making them more reliable and actionable.
- Integrate testing into rapid development cycles, aligning security with CI/CD pipelines and continuous delivery practices.
Key Achievements and Industry Impact
XBOW has not just promised AI-enabled security — it has delivered measurable impact. In 2025, its autonomous AI topped the HackerOne US leaderboard, a respected ranking of security researchers and bug hunters, marking the first time an AI system surpassed all human competitors in identifying real vulnerabilities.
The platform has discovered and reported thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities across production systems at major organizations, proving its efficacy and real-world impact. Critical findings submitted by XBOW have led to significant patches and security improvements at globally recognized technology companies.
This accomplishment underscores a broader trend: as attackers increasingly leverage AI to automate attacks, defenders must adopt equally sophisticated tools to stay ahead — and XBOW aims to be that autonomous defense for organizations worldwide.
Products and Services
While XBOW’s flagship offering is its autonomous penetration testing platform, the company has continued expanding its suite to suit different security needs:
Pentest On-Demand
In late 2025, XBOW launched Pentest On-Demand, a self-service version of its platform that enables organizations to run fully automated penetration tests with minimal setup. This service returns expert-level results — including vulnerability validation and remediation guidance — in a matter of days, dramatically compressing traditional pentesting timelines.
This product targets security teams that need high-quality testing without the cost and scheduling overhead of traditional tests, while still producing compliance-ready reports suitable for audits and external reviews.
Market Position and Growth
Operational since only 2024, XBOW has quickly established itself as a leader in AI-augmented cybersecurity. The company has attracted significant venture backing, including a $75 million Series B round in 2025 led by Altimeter Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital and other investors. This brings total funding to over $117 million, signaling strong confidence in XBOW’s market potential and technological edge.
Today XBOW operates in a competitive landscape alongside other AI-driven security firms, yet its focus on autonomous offensive security — rather than solely defensive monitoring — distinguishes its platform by proactively uncovering weaknesses before adversaries exploit them.
Vision for the Future
XBOW’s founders see autonomous security not as a luxury, but as a necessity in a world where cyber threats evolve at lightning speed and software delivery cycles compress development timelines. Their vision is a future where security is continuous, integrated, and automated — where developers and defenders are empowered by AI that works tirelessly in the background, enabling innovation without compromising safety.
As the cybersecurity landscape continues to shift, XBOW aims to expand its platform’s scope, integrating deeper with development workflows and extending its autonomous capabilities to new domains such as cloud and network security. The company also seeks to broaden its influence through strategic partnerships, integrations with trust and compliance platforms, and deeper support for enterprise and regulated industries.
Oege de Moor, Founder, XBOW
Oege de Moor is a pioneering computer scientist and entrepreneur best known for founding GitHub Copilot and GitHub Advanced Security, originally launched as Semmle. His latest venture, XBOW, is building an autonomous AI hacker designed to independently discover and exploit vulnerabilities in web applications. Prior to his entrepreneurial journey, Oege spent more than two decades as a professor of computer science at the University of Oxford, where his research helped shape modern approaches to software analysis and security.
“XBOW empowers security teams to transform from reactive to proactive defense at AI scale. For XBOW customers, autonomous offense is the best defense.”
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