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Staris CEO Adam Cecchetti. (Staris Photo)
Staris, a new Seattle-based application security startup founded by technology industry veterans, raised $5.7 million in a seed round led by Freestyle VC.
Founded in 2023, Staris uses AI to create virtual security engineers and establish “a true immune system” for applications, said CEO and co-founder Adam Cecchetti.
Its software can spot vulnerabilities before a company launches an application and fix issues in a continuous manner.
Maria Palma, general partner at Freestyle, said her firm is seeing a lot of AI-focused startups aiming to replace human workers in various functions. But some are hitting roadblocks due to the tension of taking jobs.
“We don’t see that as an issue here given there is just truly a talent shortage in the number of qualified people who can do these jobs at scale, especially with the changing scale of security risks and increased demand for security professionals,” Palma said.
Cecchetti previously founded and led Seattle startup Deja Vu Security, which was acquired by Accenture in 2019.
He co-founded Staris with Austin Fath, a longtime engineering leader and his former classmate at Carnegie Mellon University.
Fath was most recently chief innovation officer at IT consulting firm Soft Tech Consulting, and chief architect at BIzy.
“We’ve been trying to find a way to address the needs of making software better and more secure, pretty much through both of our careers — him on the technology side, me on the security side,” Cecchetti said.
Cecchetti declined to name other investors in the seed round. Staris has six employees and plans to grow headcount with the new funding.
Funding to cybersecurity startups topped $4 billion in the second quarter last year before dropping off in Q3, according to Crunchbase.
