Empirical Security
A Chicago-based predictive exposure-management startup building AI models that forecast which vulnerabilities are actually likely to be exploited, backed by a $25M Series A led by Brightmind Partners that brought total funding to $37M.
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Empirical Security, founded in 2024, builds predictive models aimed at forecasting which vulnerabilities are most likely to actually be exploited in the wild — rather than relying solely on static severity scores like CVSS — to help security teams prioritize remediation against real, forecastable risk instead of theoretical worst-case severity.
The company raised a $12M seed round in July 2025, followed rapidly by a $25M Series A in July 2026 led by Brightmind Partners, bringing total disclosed funding to $37M within roughly a year of its first institutional round — an unusually fast funding cadence reflecting strong early investor conviction in exploit-prediction as the next stage of vulnerability prioritization.
Innovation Matrix Assessment
Two funding rounds ($12M seed to $25M Series A) within about a year of founding indicates an unusually fast pace of product and business development.
Forecast-based prioritization could meaningfully improve remediation focus if accurate, though the product is too new for confirmed operational impact at scale.
A rapid seed-to-Series-A progression totaling $37M within roughly a year is a strong, if early, momentum signal from credible institutional investors.
Forward-looking exploitation-likelihood forecasting is a genuinely different framing from existing reactive severity- and exploit-scoring approaches, though its real-world differentiation from established methods like EPSS remains unproven.
Founded in 2024 with essentially no independent operating history yet; predictive accuracy claims are entirely unproven by independent sources at this stage.
Predictive exploitation forecasting addresses a widely-recognized and durable industry need to prioritize the flood of disclosed vulnerabilities more intelligently.
Why CISOs Should Care
CISOs tired of treating every 'Critical' CVSS score as equally urgent get forward-looking, forecast-based prioritization aimed at predicting which vulnerabilities attackers will actually weaponize, rather than reactive severity scoring after exploitation is already underway.
What Makes It Different
Empirical Security's core bet is predictive forecasting of future exploitation likelihood rather than the reactive exploit-prediction-scoring approaches (like EPSS) already common in the industry, positioning its models as forward-looking rather than backward-fitted.
The Matrix Verdict
52/100 — INCREMENTAL INNOVATOR
A very young but exceptionally fast-funded predictive exposure-management startup with a clear, timely thesis; genuinely promising direction, but too early-stage for meaningful efficacy evidence yet.
Editorial Note: Claims vs. Verified Findings
Funding rounds and total ($37M within about a year) are corroborated by SecurityWeek and multiple funding-tracking outlets; predictive-accuracy claims for its forecasting models are vendor-stated and were not independently benchmarked, since the company is less than two years old.
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