In Q1 2024, a Check Point Research (CPR) study witnessed a significant increase in the average number of cyber-attacks per organisation every week, reaching 1308, marking a 5% increase from Q1 2023 and a 28% increase from the last quarter of that year. The cost of attacks is climbing as well, with Statista’s estimates putting the figure above USD 13 billion by 2028.
In this tense backdrop, a start-up named Axiado has emerged, by propagating the “Software+Hardware” approach to combat cyberattacks, as the venture has created a business out of designing “security” chips and apps to leverage them. Founded in 2017, Axiado makes chips to secure devices ranging from data centres to 5G base stations (critical components in a mobile network that connect devices, such as smartphones and IoT gadgets, to the core network and the internet), thereby giving companies the power to secure their digital infrastructure on an end-to-end basis fully.
In today’s episode of the “Start-up of the Week,” International Finance will talk in detail about the venture, which in November 2024 raised USD 60 million in Series C funding, led by Maverick Silicon with participation from Samsung Catalyst Fund, Atreides Management, and Crosslink Capital.
Explaining The ‘Software+Hardware’ Approach
As per CEO Gopi Sirineni, in some machines (computers), the boot sequence (the initial start-up process) is vulnerable to attack, as the units don’t check whether the sequence has been tampered with. In recent years, more secure boot chip- and software-based technologies have risen to prominence, but they’re far from universally deployed.
Axiado, through its chip, aims to protect against boot-level attacks by authenticating boot-level updates before they’re executed, and by regularly checking the integrity of the boot sequence. Sirineni told TechCrunch that the method will prevent boot-level attacks from penetrating systems where Axiado’s chip is installed.
Axiado’s chip also handles runtime security (security for software, apps, and workloads post-boot), similar to products like Microsoft’s Pluton, Google’s Titan, and Apple’s T2. As per Sirineni, the start-up’s chip mostly employs root-of-trust technology, which cryptographically protects against hardware tampering. In addition, the chip drives Axiado’s cybersecurity monitoring platform, which tries to detect potentially malicious activity in data patterns.
Axiado has grabbed the headlines, by manufacturing the world’s first purpose-built, fully integrated AI-driven hardware security platform, with the new AX2000 and AX3000 TCUs being customised to help prevent cybersecurity and ransomware attacks for the cloud and edge markets. Axiado’s breakthrough TCU brings stability and security to the control and management of these heterogeneous infrastructures by eliminating fundamental security problems from the ground up.
Axiado’s TCU is a proactive and intelligent security solution that engages a combination of multiple axes of innovation: silicon, AI & data collection, and software. These innovations comprise silicon IPs that are the focal building blocks of its product offering. It effectively works as the last line of defence, even when all other network functions have been compromised. The TCU detects and stops ongoing attacks and recovers the system from an attack by isolating it from the network, through hardware forensics and real-time, protective AI.
Here Are The Products
Axiado’s mission is to secure the end-to-end digital infrastructure by embedding a new breed of hardware-anchored AI-driven platform security in servers, 5G and network infrastructure, with the belief that data security should be the default solution, not an option.
While placing “DPP” (Detection, Protection and Prediction) at the forefront of its innovations, Axiado’s AX3000/AX2000 TCU with built-in AI provides the industry’s most robust, hardware-anchored solution to detect and defend against ransomware and cyberattacks in cloud data centres, 5G networks, and network switches. Compact yet powerful, the processor features anti-tamper and anti-counterfeit hardware, virtualization capabilities, and safeguards against sophisticated attacks.
Next is Smart-SCM (Axiado Smart Secure Control Module), powered by the TCU (Trusted Control/Compute Unit), which is ideal for data centres. Here, we are talking about a processor that combines silicon, artificial intelligence, data collection, and software into a compact, power-efficient TCU with unique AI functionality explicitly designed for security, safeguarding cloud data centres and 5G networks.
The existing data centres have limitations, when it comes to ensuring foolproof hardware security. To address this, Axiado has reimagined Open Compute Project’s (OCP) trusted platform datacenter-ready secure control module (DC-SCM) and created the Smart-SCM card, powered by the Axiado TCU.
Smart-SCM has evolved as a complete package, in terms of being a single chip that provides cybersecurity functions like Root of Trust, Baseboard Management Controller, Trusted Platform Module, Hardware Security Module and Firewall. Generally, a data security set-up requires a huge number of independent chips to perform all these functions.
Next is Secure-NCM (Axiado Compact Secure Network Compute Module), which provides smart network interfaces and security for network switches, 5G networks across campus, data centres and service providers.
“Network infrastructure products like switches, service provider routers, 5G base stations require a rethink from a security standpoint for inline data traffic. This includes protecting firmware, side-channel attack protection, DoS, privilege escalation, and detecting vulnerabilities at boot- and run-time. Axiado Secure-NCM based on TCU architecture offers a single-chip integration of platform security, network security and various anomaly detection capabilities. In summary, TCU-based solutions, in real time, help protect platform assets and detect vulnerabilities/attacks,” stated the start-up, while explaining the product.
The Axiado AI-Driven Secure Management Card powered by the TCU allows interoperability and provides enhanced security to next-generation servers, making it the best-in-class security solution for NVIDIA MGX platforms (modular server platform that offers a variety of server variations for different networking and compute requirements).
In addition to being compact and power-efficient, the card features integrated ASIC with trusted computing, BMC, TPM, HRoT, NC-SI, and AI/ML all in a single device, apart from protecting against insider and side-channel attacks through hardware agent-based behavioural ransomware detection. A few other important features of the device are its flexible platform ownership management, secure host connectivity and encrypted memory for data and code protection.
Making A Difference In The IT Spectrum
In 2020, researchers reportedly found an “unfixable” flaw in Apple’s T2 security chip that could open devices up to the very threats the tool was designed to prevent. Supply chain issues have led to secure boot failings, as well, especially during instances in which vendors didn’t follow best practices. Axiado claims that its chips haven’t faced T2-like difficulties yet.
“Recently, to tap the massive investment in AI data centre infrastructure, Axiado launched a system that dynamically adjusts data centre cooling to reduce costs. (Cooling is often a major line item in data centre operations — and an environmental headache.) Axiado’s system leverages the company’s chip to measure and adjust cooling automatically based on workloads, similar to systems from startups like Phaidra,” TechCrunch reported in November 2024.
As per the CEO Gopi Sirineni, the latest funding has brought the Silicon Valley-based start-up’s total raised to USD 140 million, and the amount will be put toward go-to-market efforts and expanding Axiado’s 100-person workforce across its San Jose, India, and Taiwan offices. Another immediate focus area will be taking the product to mass production, so that the venture starts continuous revenue generation from 2025 onwards.
The year 2024, in general, has been a busy one for the start-up. Take the months of October and November, where Axiado entered into tie-ups with globally recognised electronics and manufacturing service (EMS+) provider Pegatron Corporation, Giga Computing (a subsidiary of GIGABYTE and an industry leader in generative AI servers and advanced cooling technologies) and Jabil (a global manufacturing solutions provider). The similarity between all these pacts was the focus on implementing AI-driven, hardware-anchored platform security. Expect Axiado to make waves in the world of cybersecurity in the coming days as a disruptive force.