MokN Raises $15M to Fight Credential Theft, GV's First French Bet

Jan de Vries · 2026-05-29

French cybersecurity startup MokN just landed a massive vote of confidence. It raised $15 million in Series A funding to fight credential theft, and here's the kicker: this marks GV (Google Ventures) first-ever investment in a French company. That's a big deal. So, what's MokN all about? It's a cybersecurity company that takes a totally different approach to a problem that's been plaguing businesses for years: stolen passwords and logins. Instead of just monitoring the dark web and hoping for the best, MokN actively hunts down compromised credentials before they can be used. ### The Problem: Phishing Is Still Winning According to ENISA's Threat Landscape 2025 report, phishing accounts for about 60% of all intrusions in Europe. That's massive. Traditional defenses like firewalls and antivirus software just aren't cutting it. Attackers keep getting smarter, and businesses keep paying the price. MokN's solution is clever. Its first product, called Baits, works by setting up ultra-realistic decoy access points. Think fake VPN portals or webmail logins that look exactly like the real thing. When an attacker tries to log in with stolen credentials, they're actually handing them over to the security team. It's like a digital trap that flips the tables on cybercriminals. ### How MokN's "Phish-Back" Technology Works Here's the simple version: attackers steal credentials, then try to use them on MokN's decoys. The system instantly recovers those compromised credentials and alerts the security team. No waiting for dark web scans. No hoping for the best. It's proactive, not reactive. Gautier Bugeon, CEO and co-founder of MokN, put it this way: "The rapid adoption by major companies and the results achieved with our first solution have confirmed one thing: this approach must go further. Today, we are laying the groundwork for Active Identity Recovery by extending proactive recovery to all forms of identity, with the ambition of making it a new global standard for identity protection." ### What the Funding Will Do With this fresh $15 million, MokN has big plans. It's going to ramp up R&D to build a full platform for identity theft protection. By the end of this year, it plans to launch new products covering customer accounts (B2B2C) and stolen cookies and sessions. That's a lot of ground to cover. But that's not all. MokN also wants to expand aggressively. It already protects over 1 million users across Fortune Global 500 companies and mid-size businesses. Now it's setting its sights on the United States and the United Kingdom. The company has leadership teams in both Paris and New York, and it plans to open new offices in the UK soon. ### Why GV Invested Luna Schmid, Partner at GV, explained why they chose MokN: "We invested in MokN because of Gautier's founder-market fit as a former SOC manager and our deep conviction in the team's ability to address a critical gap in the cybersecurity market. With their initial product, Baits, they've developed a sophisticated wedge that turns the tide on attackers by leveraging high-fidelity decoys to trigger immediate, automated recovery workflows." It's not every day that GV makes its first French investment. That tells you something about the potential here. ### What's Next for MokN By the end of 2027, MokN plans to hire 30 new employees, especially in sales, marketing, engineering, and customer success. The goal is to build local teams in every country it enters. For now, the priority is business development in the U.S. and opening the UK market. MokN is pioneering a new category it calls "Active Identity Recovery." Instead of passively monitoring for stolen data, it actively recovers compromised identities before they can cause damage. That's a shift that could change how companies think about cybersecurity. If you're in the business of protecting your company's data, this is one startup worth watching. The old ways aren't working, and MokN is proving there's a better way.