This Milan Startup Uses AI-Powered Traps to Catch Hackers Before They Strike

Jan de Vries · 2026-07-27

Let's be real for a second. Cybersecurity is exhausting. It's a never-ending game of whack-a-mole, and the moles are getting smarter, faster, and more relentless by the day. That's where Beelzebub comes in. Beelzebub is a Milan-based AI-native cybersecurity platform that's flipping the script on how we defend digital assets. Instead of just building higher walls, they're setting traps. And they just raised $3.4 million in a Seed round led by Italian DeepTech VC United Ventures to double down on that strategy. ### The Funding Details The round was exclusively led by United Ventures, a prominent Italian venture capital firm focused on deep tech. This brings Beelzebub's total funding to $3.7 million, following a $340k pre-Seed round from strategic investors and advisers. So, what's the plan for the cash? The company has a clear roadmap: - Expand the research team to stay ahead of evolving threats. - Open new commercial offices in Rome and San Francisco by the end of the year. - Ramp up client acquisition across Europe, with a particular focus on organizations that need to comply with the NIS2 directive. - Build new technology to protect AI agents directly. ### The Core Idea: Assume You're Already Breached Most cybersecurity solutions operate on the assumption that they need to keep attackers out. But Beelzebub takes a different approach. They operate on the premise of "assumed breach." The smartest assumption isn't that an attacker will break in someday—it's that one is already inside your network, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Mario Candela, CEO and founder of Beelzebub, puts it this way: "Cybersecurity is a nonstop battle, and one that humans can no longer fight alone. AI-powered attackers are too powerful, too competent, too fast, and too numerous, meaning the only way to fight back is at the same pace and intensity." ### How the Platform Works Beelzebub started as Mario Candela's research project in Milan back in 2021, and it was officially incorporated in July 2025. The platform is built around a three-pronged approach, designed to fool attackers by creating traps that look like real infrastructure. Here's the breakdown of their "purple team" structure: - **Arcangelo (Red Team - Attack):** This component simulates targeted attacks to test the system's defenses. - **Beelzebub Managed (Blue Team - Defense):** This plants LLM-powered traps throughout a company's infrastructure—think fake servers, databases, APIs, and cloud systems. The moment an attacker touches one of these traps, Beelzebub detects and blocks the attack before it can cause damage, isolating the affected machine and initiating response actions. - **Caronte (AI Analyst):** After the catch-and-kill operation, Caronte reverse-engineers the malware and delivers a full incident report in a fraction of the time a human analyst would need. It can run entirely on-premise, which is critical for enterprises and government organizations that can't risk sending sensitive data to cloud-based analysis tools. ### Real-Time Threat Intelligence One of the coolest features is how the platform stays current. More than 60 independent researchers from around the world feed live threat intelligence into the system as new attack methods emerge. The traps update in real time to mimic new CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which forces dormant attackers within the network to reveal themselves. Since Arcangelo and Beelzebub Managed form one automated offense-defense loop, there are no handoffs between tools or vendors. The entire process is seamless. ### Why This Matters Now Massimiliano Magrini, co-founder and Managing Partner at United Ventures, nails why this is so timely: "The cybersecurity market is undergoing a structural reset: when offensive AI scales faster than any human team can respond, the only viable defense is one that operates at the same speed and intelligence." In a world where AI-driven attacks are becoming the norm, Beelzebub's approach feels less like a luxury and more like a necessity. They're not just playing defense—they're setting a trap, and waiting for the hackers to walk right into it.