Vancouver-based cybersecurity startup Styx Intelligence has secured $2.7 million CAD in seed funding to help organizations address potential online threats to their brands and safeguard their digital presence.
The company is developing a software platform designed to enable clients to quickly detect and respond to threats ranging from brand impersonation to phishing scams and data leaks.
“These types of risks are continuing to evolve and increase.”
Santosh Nair, Styx
Styx was founded in 2021 by CEO Karim Ladha and CTO Santosh Nair—two repeat cybersecurity entrepreneurs who sold their last company, Vancouver-based managed security services provider Integrity-Paahi Solutions, to Deloitte back in 2016.
In an interview with BetaKit, Nair said that since Styx launched, the volume of impersonation and phishing scams has grown. He claimed brand-based attacks against enterprises have been on the rise lately, and noted that the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has led to cases where enterprises have been targeted by convincing AI-generated imposter content.
“These types of risks are continuing to evolve and increase,” Nair told BetaKit in an interview, noting that he sees “a huge market opportunity” in helping organizations monitor and remediate these types of threats through Styx’s platform.
Styx’s all-equity seed round closed in October. The financing was led by BDC Capital’s Seed Venture Fund, with support from fellow new investors Framework Venture Partners, Top Down Ventures, and Sprout Fund. Ladha declined to disclose Styx’s valuation.
This round brings Styx’s total funding to $4.3 million, a figure that includes $1.6 million in pre-seed financing from 2023.
Nair and Ladha bring decades of experience working in enterprise cybersecurity to Styx. “We have a long history of building companies,” Nair said.
As organizations’ digital footprints have expanded, and cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) adoption has increased, Nai said that the visibility of threats has declined as companies’ ability to manage them has faltered. The CTO said many organizations have historically relied upon the ability of their teams to manually detect and take down digital threats, but this approach is no longer scalable given the increasing volume of attack vectors and potential risk areas.
At the same time, there is an onus on organizations to spot and address these threats early to mitigate their reputational, and in some cases, financial impact.
“We felt that the market was being underserved,” Ladha told BetaKit.
Enter Styx, which aims to bring a “unified approach to external cybersecurity.” The startup’s platform tracks organizations’ digital footprints from an external-facing perspective across a variety of platforms, keeping customers informed of potential risks, helping them take action, and tying everything together into a risk score.
“Styx Intelligence is addressing an emerging market need with an AI-first approach that is both timely and essential, especially as AI and deepfakes reshape the threat landscape,” BDC Capital Seed Venture Fund partner Dinar Ahmed said in a statement.
Styx’s clients include Coca-Cola Canada, GreenShield, KPMG, and Reitmans. While Styx is focusing on mid-sized to enterprise clients to start, like financial services and retail firms and governments, the startup has also been seeing some demand from smaller customers.
Styx intends to use this funding to expand its team and invest in product development and sales and marketing. The startup already has clients in the United States and Latin America with plans to move into Europe.
On the product side, Styx’s game plan entails improving its platform’s detection capabilities, bolstering its customer experience, and investing in more automation on the takedown front.
Feature image courtesy Styx Intelligence.