Hacktron, a cybersecurity startup founded by elite competitive hackers Zayne Zhang, Mohan Pedhapati, and Harsh Jaiswal, today announced it has raised $2.9 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Crane Venture Partners, with participation from Project Europe, Vercel Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, Overlook Ventures, supported by a network of strategic partners and angel investors. Hacktron is building an AI-powered platform that continuously tests software for vulnerabilities at the pace of modern development.
Hacktron raises $2.9M pre-seed led by Crane Venture Partners to build AI-powered security testing on every code change.
Founded by elite competitive hackers with multiple wins at DEF CON CTF and presentations at DEF CON and Black Hat.
Identified and disclosed vulnerabilities in BeyondTrust Remote Support, GitHub, GitLab, Next.js, Cloudflare infrastructure, and OAuth2 Proxy.
Performed security testing for Perplexity AI and Supabase.
Generated approximately $240,000 in revenue in first nine months.
Team member Fabian Faessler has nearly one million YouTube subscribers.
“Attackers are already using AI to find and exploit vulnerabilities faster than ever,” said Zayne Zhang, founder of Hacktron. “Most companies are still testing security like it's a quarterly exercise. We're building the system that tests every code change like a real attacker would so teams can move fast without shipping risk.”
“The best security founders don't think like defenders, they think like attackers,” said Scott Sage, co-founder and partner at Crane Venture Partners. “What stood out immediately about Hacktron was the team's ability to combine elite offensive security expertise with a product vision built for how software is actually developed today. AI is changing the economics of both building and breaking software, and Hacktron is creating what modern software teams will need to succeed.”
Hacktron's founding team comes from the world of competitive hacking, with multiple wins at DEF CON CTF and presentations at top security conferences including DEF CON and Black Hat. The company has identified and responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities across widely used software and platforms, including software used widely by Fortune 500 companies such as BeyondTrust Remote Support, frameworks and infrastructure used by companies like Vercel (Next.js) and Cloudflare, developer platforms such as GitHub and GitLab, and multiple open-source and enterprise systems.
Most recently, Hacktron uncovered critical vulnerabilities in the widely used OAuth2 Proxy project. The company has also performed security testing for high-growth technology companies including Perplexity AI and Supabase.
Hacktron's platform combines AI with attacker-style techniques to continuously test every pull request and code change, identify deep, exploitable vulnerabilities not just known patterns, reduce false positives compared to traditional scanners and newer AI tools, and assist developers with remediation so fixes happen in real time.
Hacktron has generated approximately $240,000 in revenue in its first nine months, strong early validation for a seed-stage company. The new funding will go toward expanding the engineering and security research team, accelerating product development, and scaling go-to-market. In addition to its technical credibility, Hacktron benefits from a built-in audience through team member Fabian Faessler, who has built a following of nearly one million subscribers on YouTube.
Hacktron is an AI-powered cybersecurity company focused on continuously identifying and fixing vulnerabilities in modern software. Founded by elite hackers, the company brings attacker-grade security testing into the development lifecycle, enabling teams to ship faster and more securely.
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