- Dutch startup Indurex has raised €7M in a spherical led by Contrarian Ventures.
- Its software program flags dangerous modifications to plant engineering and security settings.
- SANS discovered 22% of surveyed organisations had an industrial cyber incident in 2025.
Most industrial cybersecurity instruments watch the community. Indurex appears on the knowledge beneath it: the engineering settings, safety configurations and security capabilities that determine whether or not a plant runs inside protected limits. The Amsterdam startup has raised €7 million in a spherical led by Contrarian Ventures, with Axeleo Capital and Curiosity taking part.
Indurex, based in 2025 and out of stealth since January 27, 2026, sells a platform known as SafeGuard AI to operators in oil and fuel, vitality, utilities, manufacturing and knowledge centres. It pulls knowledge from distributed management techniques, which run a plant’s processes; security instrumented techniques, which shut a course of down when circumstances flip harmful; industrial historians, which file course of knowledge; and current safety instruments.
AI brokers then flag anomalies and engineering deviations that want a human to take a look at them. Gartner named Indurex a Cool Vendor in its Coolest Vendor Innovations in Cyber-Physical Systems Security, 2026 report, printed on September 14. Gartner says it doesn’t endorse the distributors it lists.
“Cyber defenses in these vital sectors have centered solely on the community. We concentrate on the core industrial knowledge itself: the engineering, course of and security alerts that decide whether or not a plant is working inside protected limits. Cybersecurity and operational excellence have too typically been managed as separate disciplines — Engineering Intelligence is the lacking layer, and this funding permits us to carry that functionality to extra operators throughout vital infrastructure,” stated Jalal Bouhdada, founder & CEO of Indurex.
Why watching the community will not be sufficient
Conventional operational know-how safety platforms, which defend the {hardware} and software program that run bodily gear, primarily monitor community exercise and related property. Indurex says that misses a unique type of danger: modifications to engineering configurations, safety settings and security capabilities that would create bodily hazard.
Its platform pairs that view with menace detection, automated compliance reporting and advisable actions for individuals to hold out. The reporting issues to operators working to the worldwide industrial safety and security requirements IEC 62443, IEC 61511 and IEC 61508, and to the EU’s NIS2 cybersecurity directive.
A local weather fund leads an industrial safety spherical
Contrarian Ventures is healthier identified for local weather tech than for cybersecurity. The Vilnius-based fund, based in 2017, invests at pre-seed and seed stage with cheques of 1 million to 4 million euros, and has backed PVcase, BeZero Carbon and Zoomo. TFN lined the launch of its second fund, targeting €100 million, in August 2022.
“Electrification is placing extra vital infrastructure on-line, and assaults on it are rising, with the injury felt within the bodily world: chilly houses, darkish hospitals, water that stops flowing. Detection alone is not sufficient. Operators want to know what an alert means for the bodily course of behind it. Having constructed and offered an organization on this area, Jalal is aware of what operators throughout oil and fuel, energy and manufacturing want, which makes Indurex certainly one of only a few corporations that understands each the community packet and the bodily course of,” stated Peciulaitis, founder & managing accomplice at Contrarian Ventures.
The opposite two backers are early-stage specialists too. Axeleo Capital, a French enterprise agency, backs business-to-business software program and counts Yogosha and Alsid amongst its cybersecurity exits. Amsterdam-based Curiosity, based in 2021 by Herman Kienhuis and Maurice Beckand Verwée, backs pre-seed and seed AI software program startups and introduced a €17 million first shut for its second fund on June 9, 2026.
The cash will fund analysis and improvement and business growth throughout Europe and the Center East, with development within the US and Asia-Pacific to observe. Indurex has not stated which buyers are new, or disclosed its whole funding, valuation, headcount or spherical kind. In January, Bouhdada advised SecurityWeek the corporate was making ready a pre-seed spherical.
A crowded discipline, and its largest names are being purchased
Indurex is getting into a class that enormous patrons are consolidating. Accenture agreed in June 2026 to take a majority stake in Dragos at a $3.25 billion valuation. ServiceNow agreed in December 2025 to purchase Armis for about $7.75 billion. Mitsubishi Electrical’s acquisition of Nozomi Networks has adopted the identical sample. Claroty took a unique route and raised $150 million in a Series F in January 2026, led by Golub Progress, with as much as $50 million extra dedicated by current buyers.
Rome-based Exein, which TFN lined when it raised €100 million in December 2025, then secured $270 million at a $1.7 billion valuation in a spherical led by Headline, introduced on September 15. Exein is aiming at a unique goal: safety for robots, drones and automobiles.
Cash is plentiful for early rounds however skinny per deal. Axeleo’s quarterly index, printed by an Indurex investor, counted 459 million euros raised throughout 33 European cybersecurity offers within the third quarter of 2026, and Exein’s spherical alone made up 55% of it. Pre-seed and seed offers have been 70% of the whole by rely.
The demand case rests on a survey. The SANS Institute’s 2025 State of ICS/OT Security survey, which drew on 330 practitioners, discovered that 22% of organisations reported a cyber incident of their industrial management or operational know-how environments in 2025. Of these incidents, 40% disrupted operations, and almost one in 5 took greater than a month to repair. Unauthorised exterior entry began half of them. Accenture, which purchased into the class in June, estimates that OT safety shall be price about $27 billion in 2026 and nearly $59 billion by 2031.
Consolidation leaves room for a specialist, and it raises the stakes on the one declare Indurex has to show: that bodily danger exhibits up first in a plant’s engineering knowledge. Operators will settle that with contracts, and the announcement names no buyer.
