revel8 successful with 7 million euros seed to defend against AI cyberattacks

Berlin-based cybersecurity startup revel8 has closed a seed financing round of 5.7 million euros. Together with the pre-seed financing from 2024, the company now has a total of 7 million euros in growth capital. The new round was led by European venture capitalist Peak. Other investors include Fortino Capital, Merantix Capital and a number of well-known business angels, including professional footballer Mario Götze, Sergej Epp (CISO, Sysdig), Michael Schrank (CISO, Adidas) and Alexander Rinke (CEO, Celonis).

Growing threat from generative AI

Generative AI is fundamentally changing the cyber threat landscape. Attackers can create deceptively real voices, images and messages in no time at all. Vishing attacks (voice phishing) increased by more than 400 percent in 2024. Spectacular incidents are occurring more and more frequently: A deepfake call in Hong Kong led to a transfer of 25 million US dollars; in the UK, retailer Marks & Spencer reported losses of over 300 million pounds in 2025.

Generative AI is changing the threat landscape faster than companies can react. The revel8 approach makes humans a proactive part of the security system. We see the potential here for a European market leader in the field of human risk

Johan van Mil, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Peak

However, most security incidents are not caused by technical vulnerabilities, but by human error. revel8 wants to address this and train employees with realistic simulations of new threats. Even we have recently noticed an increase in fraudulent calls to our editorial team using artificial intelligence.

AI-native cybersecurity platform

The revel8 platform replicates new attack techniques within a few hours and adapts them to individual users with the help of open source intelligence (OSINT). Each person thus receives a personalized "playlist of attacks" based on their role, behavior and learning progress. The aim is not only to sensitize employees, but also to actively integrate them into a company's security architecture as a human firewall.

Its customers already include well-known companies such as FC Bayern Munich, OBI and Stihl. In addition, revel8 is one of the first providers on the Schwarz Group's Stackit marketplace and thus offers a European cloud option.

The product has created a deepfake voice of me to attack our team with fake invoices. It is precisely these realistic simulations that show how powerful revel8 is - and why it is urgently needed.

Rasmus Rothe, General Partner at Merantix Capital

From foundation to expansion

revel8 2024 was founded by Julius Muth, Tom Müller and Robert Seilbeck, who previously worked at Celonis. Their goal is ambitious: to train 10 million employees worldwide as "human firewalls". With the fresh capital, revel8 plans to expand its team, add new functions to the platform and expand internationally."We want to ensure that companies are not left behind in the arms race between attackers and defenders," explains CEO Julius Muth.