Zepo Intelligence has raised a $15 million seed round to help companies defend employees from AI-boosted social engineering, including deepfakes, fake voice calls, and targeted phishing.
The backdrop is a fast-changing threat model: the World Economic Forum figure cited in the report says AI-fueled social engineering has jumped 1,200% since ChatGPT entered the market, contributing to more than $1 trillion in damages “last year.”
Zepo’s pitch is a “workspace security” layer that runs realistic attack simulations, flags weak points in employee behavior, and then pairs that with tailored training and real-time alerts across online workspaces.
Co-founders Antonio Muñoz and Enrique Holgado say legacy defenses, training tools on one side, filters on the other, don’t hold up against multi-channel, AI-personalized campaigns. “Artificial Intelligence has turned social engineering into one of the biggest challenges society faces today… traditional cybersecurity… no longer provides the needed protection,” Muñoz said.
The company positions itself against incumbents like KnowBe4 and Proofpoint by combining continuous detection with “human risk analytics,” and says it has been recognized by programs from Google, CrowdStrike, NVIDIA, and Amazon.
The round was led by Kibo Ventures, eCAPITAL, and TIN Capital, with plans to expand the team and roll out the product globally. Zepo also claims 5x year-over-year revenue growth and says it will hire in data engineering and AI while expanding across Europe and the US over the next 18 months.
Kibo Ventures co-founder and managing partner Javier Torremocha framed the bet as a response to rising attack sophistication: “AI-driven attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and frequent, necessitating tools like those offered by Zepo… [which] is winning over top-tier enterprises.”
