- ZAST.AI secured $6 million in Pre-A funding from Hillhouse Capital, bringing its total funding near $10 million.
- The AI-powered security platform discovered and validated 119 real CVEs in major projects like Microsoft Azure SDK and Apache Struts in 2025.
- Its core technology automatically generates and executes Proof-of-Concept (PoC) exploits, aiming for a “zero false positive” standard in vulnerability reporting.
Seattle-based AI security firm ZAST.AI announced on January 5, 2026, that it completed a $6 million Pre-A funding round led by Hillhouse Capital. Consequently, the company’s total funding now approaches $10 million, which signals market confidence in its novel approach to vulnerability validation.
The investment follows a highly productive year for the startup. According to its 2025 Bug Hunter Report, ZAST.AI discovered hundreds of zero-day vulnerabilities, leading to 119 assigned CVEs in widely-used open-source projects. Affected codebases included production software from tech giants like Microsoft, Apache, and Alibaba.
“Report is cheap, show me the POC!” said Co-founder Geng Yang, explaining the company’s founding philosophy. He noted that traditional security tools suffer from high false positive rates, forcing engineers to waste time manually verifying alerts.
ZAST.AI’s platform reconstructs this process by using AI to perform deep code analysis. More importantly, it automatically generates and executes Proof-of-Concept code to confirm each vulnerability is exploitable. This “Automated POC Generation + Validation” architecture ensures reports only contain verified issues.
“This isn’t an optimization—it’s a reconstruction,” said a Hillhouse Capital representative. “ZAST.AI has redefined the standard for vulnerability validation.” The tool also identifies complex semantic-level flaws like business logic bugs, an area traditionally challenging for automation.
Meanwhile, the company already serves multiple enterprise clients, including Fortune Global 500 companies. The new funding will fuel core R&D, product expansion, and global market development. CEO Geng Yang stated the vision is to build an end-to-end AI-driven security platform for global customers.
✅ Follow BITNEWSBOT on Telegram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X.com, and Google News for instant updates.
