Lancaster spinout Mindgard gets £3m for AI security tools

London-based AI cybersecurity startup Mindgard has secured £3m in seed financing from investors IQ Capital and Lakestar.

The startup has developed a platform for businesses to test the security of AI models. Mindgard says its platform interoperates with “almost any” cybersecurity system.

Mindgard was founded last year by Garraghan, Steve Street and Dr Neeraj Suri. The concept behind the spinout was created at Lancaster University.

It is looking to ride the wave of adoption for large language models, the technology powering popular advanced chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard.

“Today’s businesses are rapidly embracing LLMs and other AI technologies,” said Dr Peter Garraghan, CEO of Mindgard.

“Although these enterprises understand the need to secure their AI assets, the cybersecurity that worked for them in the past won’t help guard their AI against the next generation of cyber threats.”

The AI spinout is a member of Nvidia’s Inception Programme and Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub.

Archie Muirhead, partner at IQ Capital, said: “With Mindgard’s platform, the complexity of model assessment is made easy and actionable through integrations into common MLOps and SecOps tools and an ever-growing attack library.”

London and Cambridge-based IQ Capital announced its £320m raise in June to continue investing in the deep tech sector.

Swiss venture capital firm Lakestar in June led the £11m seed round in London-based warehouse robot startup BotsAndUs.