Cytix

Cytix sells continuous offensive security testing (its own term, “COST”) aimed at a specific mismatch: application security teams still largely rely on point-in-time penetration tests scheduled annually or quarterly, while modern software, especially AI-assisted development, ships continuously. Cytix’s platform analyzes code changes as they happen, uses that analysis to predict where new vulnerabilities are likely to have been introduced, and orchestrates automated and human-augmented testing against those changes rather than waiting for a scheduled engagement.

Founded in 2022 in Manchester, UK by Ben Armstrong and Thomas Ballin, Cytix raised a £1.6 million seed round in 2024 co-led by Praetura Ventures’ NPIF II fund and French VC Auriga, followed by a £5.18 million ($7M) Series A in 2026 led by Northern Gritstone, explicitly targeting the security testing gap created by AI-assisted, high-velocity software delivery. Rather than selling only to enterprise security teams directly, Cytix has structured distribution partnerships with established firms KPMG and NCC Group, who run managed security testing programs built on the Cytix platform — a channel strategy that lends the technology some independent credibility beyond Cytix’s own claims. Named platform customers include Cambridge University Press & Assessment, fintech BNVK, and bot-mitigation vendor Netacea.

The company’s proposition depends on continuous testing actually catching vulnerabilities faster than scheduled pentests without generating so much noise that security teams tune it out — a real and unresolved tension in the automated-testing space generally, not unique to Cytix, and one that is not yet settled by independently published, head-to-head efficacy data.