STARTVIRGINIA April 2025 news roundup

Antithesis Operations, a Vienna software testing startup whose tools find bugs in computer programming code, announced in mid-February it had raised $30 million in new funding. The company aims to double its workforce and continue its expansion into new markets. Repeat investor Amplify Partners, a California-based venture capital firm, led the funding round, and San Francisco’s Spark Capital participated. The new funding came less than a year after Antithesis emerged from stealth in March 2024 with $47 million in fresh capital. The company had 40 employees then and now has 70 employees. (DC Inno)

Herndon startup Knostic has raised $11 million to expand its workforce and further develop its products that help companies adopting AI tools avoid disclosing sensitive internal information with need-to-know controls, the company announced March 5. Portugal-based venture capital firm Bright Pixel Capital led the round, which included participation from San Francisco’s Silicon Valley CISO Investments and California’s DNX Ventures. The fresh funding brings Knostic’s total outside investment to $14 million since its founding. Cybersecurity veterans Gadi Evron and Sounil Yu launched the company in 2023. (DC Inno)

Richmond’s Lighthouse Labs revealed in mid-February the participants of its 18th accelerator cohort, selected from a field of nearly 100 applications. The cohort includes: Absurd Snacks, a Richmond food products company; Buckstop, a Richmond lifecycle services company for smart device manufacturers; EarthaPro, a Haymarket management software company; Sartography, a Staunton workflow tool company; Tow Ninja, a Mechanicsville fintech platform; Utrain, a Charlottesville company with an app for basketball trainers; and VroomBrick, a Hampton startup with step-by-step software for military families and veterans buying homes. (Richmond Inno)

Rune Technologies, an Arlington County defense tech company building software to enable military logistics in contested environments, announced on Feb. 26 it had raised $6.2 million in seed funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, with participation from Point72 Ventures and XYZ Venture Capital, as well as individual investments from several defense tech executives, including Gokul Subramanian, Anduril’s senior vice president of engineering (software programs); Vannevar Labs CEO Brett Granberg; Cape CEO John Doyle; and Scott Sanders, Forterra’s chief growth officer. The funding will allow Rune to scale its engineering and product teams to drive expanded development and testing of the company’s TyrOS software. (News release)

SpecterOps, an Alexandria-based adversary-focused cybersecurity solutions provider, raised a $75 million Series B funding round, the startup announced March 5. Global software investor Insight Partners led the round, which had participation from other investors like Ansa Capital, M12, Ballistic Ventures, Decibel and Cisco Investments. The funding will support SpecterOps’ rapid scaling of its BloodHound Enterprise platform for removing identity-based attack paths. The company launched BHE in 2021 to help organizations fortify their Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Entra ID platforms against this security issue. (News release)

PEOPLE

Brenda Boehm joined RiPSIM Technologies as its CEO, the Ashburn startup with a software-as-a-service eSIM platform announced in early February. The company’s co-founder, Chris Jahr, became chief strategy officer. Boehm has held leadership roles with Fortune 100 tech companies like Dell Technologies and Cisco, as well as with startups Starent Networks, Tango Networks, Cyphre and Underline Infrastructure. She was also chief strategy officer for the Telecommunications Industry Association for a little over a year. Boehm has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Louisiana and a master’s degree from Southern Methodist University. (News release)