Doppel is a cybersecurity company focused on defending organizations against social-engineering attacks by leveraging AI-driven tools and intelligence. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Doppel co-founder and CEO Kevin Tian to gain a deeper understanding of the company.
Kevin Tian’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background? Tian said:
“Before Doppel, I was a software engineer at Uber and Lyft, where I worked on dispatch systems and flying cars, not the traditional cybersecurity founder background. I met my cofounder Rahul Madduluri there where he worked on UberPOOL, and we set out to start a company leveraging our expertise in AI and large-scale distributed systems.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Tian shared:
“Rahul and I had always talked about starting a company, and in 2022, the stars aligned – AI capabilities were accelerating, remote work was reshaping digital interactions and threat actors were quickly adapting. Rahul was roommates with one of the heads of research at OpenAI, so we had early insight into the trajectory of large language models. We saw a gap in how organizations were defending themselves from impersonation and deception attacks, especially as AI made it cheaper and easier to conduct them at scale. We began by helping crypto companies combat impersonation, and quickly realized our technology had far broader applications across the enterprise.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Tian reflected:
“It has to be the moment we saw our AI agents outperform humans in threat triage for the first time. That was a turning point. We replaced an entire tier-one analyst team (about 30% of our security ops) with AI agents that now review millions of alerts per day with greater recall than the operational team. It wasn’t just a productivity gain, it was a validation of our core vision.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Tian explained:
“At its core, Doppel is a social engineering defense platform. Our AI agents autonomously scan the internet for impersonation and deception campaigns like fake LinkedIn accounts, malicious ads, spoofed email domains, even fraudulent WhatsApp numbers. But we don’t stop at detection – we also handle the takedown. Our “threat graph” maps all the connections between these campaigns: phone numbers, IP addresses, advertiser accounts, emails and more. We also offer solutions like executive and brand protection.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Tian and the team faced in building the company? Tian acknowledged:
“One major challenge was scalability. Early on, we relied heavily on manual review using contractors. As our alert volume grew into the millions per day, it became clear that human triage wouldn’t scale. The breakthrough came when reasoning-capable AI models became viable. We transitioned from a co-pilot model to fully autonomous agents, replacing entire analyst teams and improving both speed and accuracy.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Tian noted:
“The evolution has been dramatic. We went from manually tagging impersonator accounts to deploying sophisticated industry-specific AI agents. These agents now understand the unique threat models for sectors like oil & gas, real estate, finance and media. Our threat graph allows us to track multi-channel attacks across email, social media, mobile and web – something traditional security tools can’t do.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Tian cited:
“A few stand out:
- Transitioning from crypto to broader enterprise markets in 2023
- Replacing our tier-one security analysts with AI agents in 2024
- Tripling our revenue year-over-year and 90% growth in customers overall
- Closing our $35 million Series B, led by Bessemer Venture Partners in May 2025, bringing our total funding to $54.4 million and valuing the company at $205 million.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Tian about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“One example is Notion. They were under attack from malicious ads and impersonator accounts, including deep clones of their download page. Our agents shut down thousands of these threats quickly. Over time, the volume of attacks dropped significantly. According to their security lead, Doppel made Notion “a very expensive target” for attackers.”
Funding
When asking Tian about the company’s funding details, he revealed:
“Our recent Series B was the biggest milestone yet. As previously mentioned, we raised $35 million at a $205 million valuation. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from new investors 9Yards Capital and Sozo Ventures, as well as returning backers like a16z, South Park Commons, Strategic Cyber Ventures, Script Capital and Sabrina Hahn. This round came on the heels of tremendous momentum: 3x ARR growth since our Series A, 400% growth in enterprise customers and 8x expansion revenue from existing clients.”
“The funding allows us to scale our go-to-market efforts, invest deeply in R&D and expand our AI-powered platform to meet growing enterprise demand for social engineering defense.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Tian assessed:
“Social engineering defense is an emerging and rapidly growing space. Companies spend $200 billion on cybersecurity, and social engineering is the #1 attack vector by far, more than 4x any other attack. Our multi-channel approach, especially as attacks move beyond phishing emails into SMS, LinkedIn, malvertising and more, is enabling us to capture the market and unify executive protection, brand protection and threat intel use cases.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Tian affirmed:
“We’re creating a new category in this space around social engineering defense. Attackers are using much more than just a phishing email to get into your organization. We collect data that traditional security companies don’t, including impersonator accounts, phone numbers, social ads, advertiser IDs and more. The models we’re using are different as well. We’re using that data to constantly tune the models, especially for all these different industries and different threat profiles. Lastly, we’re not a traditional cybersecurity team – we’re really good at AI models, automation and large scale distributed systems, which has been a key part of our growth.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Tian emphasized:
“We’re building Doppel into the default platform for social engineering defense. That includes expanding internationally, launching more products based on our threat graph like multi-channel simulation, and possibly exploring strategic acquisitions, particularly ones that bring unique data or help expand our product footprint.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Tian concluded:
“Generative AI is democratizing deception at scale. We will soon be living in a world where AI can create a deceptive digital experience through any medium, and we’re on a mission to combat this. Thanks to Doppel, defenders have the same asymmetric power that attackers now wield.”
