A COMPANY, Socket, has secured a $40million funding round to tackle the rising tide of supply chain security attacks.
With over 90 per cent of modern applications built on open source, security has become more critical than ever. Traditional Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools are struggling to keep up with ever rising attacks.
Socket safeguards companies from software supply chain attacks by detecting and preventing threats in open source code and empowering developers to secure their apps and critical services against malware and other security risks.
The company said it is laser-focused on proactively monitoring open source packages for malicious behaviors like backdoors, typo-squatting, and obfuscated code.
The Socket Series B $40million funding round was led by Abstract Ventures, with participation from Elad Gil, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and a stellar group of angel investors including Bret Taylor (OpenAI), Phil Venables (Google), Scott Johnston (Docker), Christina Cacioppo (Vanta), Ann Mather (Pixar, Alphabet, Netflix, Airbnb), and Tobias Lütke (Shopify), among others. This latest round brings Socket’s total funding to $65million, fuelling its mission to modernize security for open source software and build out its team across engineering, product, and design.
Founder and CEO of Socket, Feross Aboukhadijeh, said: “We’ve seen incredible momentum over the past year. Our technology has made it possible for leading AI, B2B, and finance companies to switch from legacy SCA solutions like Snyk to Socket. We’re not just catching vulnerabilities — we’re detecting and blocking malicious threats in real time.”
New software supply chain security standard
Socket’s platform now supports six programming languages, including newly added Java and Ruby, and handles critical use cases like license enforcement and reachability analysis — making it a comprehensive replacement for legacy tools.
Also speaking, CISO at Anthropic, Jason Clinton, said: “Attackers are evolving their supply chain attacks and legacy tools aren’t catching them. Socket’s real-time threat detection helps strengthen our security posture, even from zero-day supply chain attacks.”
Founder and CEO at Replit, Amjad Masad, said: “As generative AI drives unprecedented speed in software development, the risk of malicious or vulnerable packages slipping through is higher than ever. Socket provides preventative protection, catching threats before they can compromise organizations and enabling developers to innovate without sacrificing security.”
“If you haven’t explored Socket yet, now’s the time,” Head of Security at Figma, Dev Akhawe, said.
Innovation driving success
In the last 12 months, Socket has shipped groundbreaking features, including AI-powered threat detection for software dependencies in six programming language ecosystems which have enabled it to detect and block over 100 software supply chain attacks every week. This pace of innovation has been key to Socket’s rapid growth, with the company now protecting over 7,500 organizations and 300,000 GitHub repositories.
“Socket is revolutionizing how companies secure their software. As organizations face increasing software supply chain threats, Socket’s preventative and developer-friendly approach is exactly what’s needed. Socket’s ability to rip-and-replace legacy SCA tools has already made Socket the go-to solution for leading companies that want to massively up-level their application security. We’re proud to lead their Series B and support them in their mission to make open source software safer for everyone,” Founder and Managing Partner at Abstract Ventures, Ramtin Naimi, said.
Future of software security
“Socket is taking an entirely new approach to one of the hardest problems in security in a stagnant part of the industry,” said Elad Gil, investor and co-founder at Color Health. “It’s rare to see a team ship this fast and deliver such a meaningful impact.
With fresh capital, Socket plans to accelerate its product development and expand its team. The company is actively hiring for roles in engineering, product, and sales as it scales to meet the growing demand for Socket’s next-gen application security platform.
“We’re building a world-class team to tackle one of the most urgent challenges in software today,” Feross said.
As supply chain attacks grow more frequent and sophisticated, companies need to move beyond reactive security measures. Socket’s mission is clear: to stop supply chain threats before they’re inside your organization, providing the peace of mind that developers and security teams need to focus on what they do best — building great products.
