Bugcrowd, a crowdsourced AI-powered cybersecurity platform, has secured $102m in strategic growth financing.

The startup’s ‘bug bounty’ program – used by OpenAI, T-Mobile and the US government – offers developers cash for spotting problems in a company’s code. A monetary reward is given to developers if they discover a bug. 

Bugcrowd has a database of over 500,000 hackers that are able to help companies discover flaws in their cybersecurity.

The new funding will be used to add a further 100 workers to Bugcrowd’s current 350-strong workforce.

The startup, which was founded in 2012, is also looking to expand outside the US which currently accounts for around 70% of its revenue, Reuters reported.

Bugcrowd’s new round of funding was led by General Catalyst with participation from existing investors Rally Ventures and Costanoa Ventures. 

“We saw an opportunity to make a strategic investment in the crowdsourced security market, with the goal of fostering collaboration between customers and hackers to collectively tackle real threats and vulnerabilities,” said Mark Crane, partner at General Catalyst. 

“In our view, the validation from customers, hackers, industry analysts, and the broader cybersecurity community well positions Bugcrowd to be a category-leading company,” Crane added.

Over the past few years, cybersecurity has seen a shift to automation backed by the maturity of AI. However, human hackers remain at the forefront of concern for companies.

Research and analysis company GlobalData predicts that enterprises will become more open to using AI as an important defensive tool in their cybersecurity arsenal in 2024.

“Automating incident response with AI makes it easier to resolve more incidents quickly, reducing the organisation’s downtime and resources required to deal with IT security,” GlobalData stated in its Thematic Research: Cybersecurity 2023 report.