Frenos has raised a $1.52 million seed extension to expand its artificial intelligence-powered platform for continuously testing the security of operational technology environments. The round was led by Momenta and Exposition Ventures, with participation from Riptide Ventures. The financing brings Frenos’ total funding to $6.4 million.
Frenos plans to use the capital to expand its customer success organization as adoption grows across critical infrastructure and defense markets. The company will also increase investment in its AI research and development team.
Operational technology, commonly called OT, includes the hardware and software used to control physical industrial processes. These systems can be found in manufacturing plants, energy facilities, transportation infrastructure, defense environments and other mission-critical operations.
Traditional cybersecurity tools often identify long lists of software vulnerabilities but do not determine which weaknesses could realistically be combined into an attack path capable of disrupting an industrial process.
Frenos is seeking to address that limitation through simulated penetration testing performed against a digital representation of a customer’s environment.
The Frenos Platform creates a digital twin of an OT network and uses the company’s SAIRA AI reasoning agent to simulate how an attacker could move through the environment. The system chains potential exploits together and prioritizes the vulnerabilities that could lead to meaningful operational disruption.
Because the tests are performed through a digital twin, Frenos said customers can evaluate their security posture without installing additional hardware, scanning live systems or interrupting production.
This approach is particularly relevant in industrial environments where conventional penetration testing can create operational risk. A test that interferes with a manufacturing line, power system or other physical process could cause downtime, equipment damage or safety concerns.
Frenos is also launching SAIRA Co-Work, which develops the company’s reasoning engine into a persistent OT security assistant. The system is designed to analyze live digital twin information and guide users through complex investigations using evidence-based findings.
The company is conducting additional research into a foundation model designed for long-context reasoning and autonomous engineering workflows.
Long-context capabilities could allow the system to analyze extensive information about network architecture, devices, vulnerabilities, security controls and prior findings before recommending actions.
The funding follows a period of significant commercial growth for Frenos. The company said annual recurring revenue has increased more than tenfold since the beginning of 2025 and grew 215% during the first half of 2026.
Frenos also reported that its sales pipeline increased 2.7 times year over year, average deal size grew fivefold and 2026 bookings had already reached four times its total bookings for 2025, with five months remaining in the year.
In one customer environment, SAIRA reviewed more than 12,000 OT vulnerability findings and identified eight that were actually exploitable. Frenos said this reduced the volume of remediation noise by 99.9%.
The company is targeting a growing industrial cybersecurity market as ransomware, cyber-physical threats and the convergence of information technology and operational technology increase the number of potential attack paths.
Frenos cited an industry projection estimating that the OT security market will grow from $27.4 billion in 2026 to $58.9 billion by 2031. The company also pointed to reporting about the first known zero-day exploit developed using AI as evidence that adversaries are gaining access to more sophisticated tools.
Frenos was founded by CEO Brian Proctor, who spent more than a decade protecting industrial environments. The company is positioning its platform as a way for operators to distinguish urgent, exploitable risks from vulnerabilities that are unlikely to affect production.
Momenta invests in industrial technologies across energy, manufacturing, supply chains and smart infrastructure. Exposition Ventures supports early-stage companies developing technologies for industrial production and physical systems.
KEY QUOTES:
“Every OT operator has a vulnerability list a mile long. Almost none of it matters. What matters is the handful an adversary can actually exploit given the real conditions in your network.”
“This funding puts more muscle behind both sides of that promise: hands-on customer success for the operators who depend on us, and deeper AI research behind SAIRA.”
Brian Proctor, Founder and CEO of Frenos
“Most OT security testing tells you what’s vulnerable, not what’s defensible. The question that matters is what path takes an attacker from an exposed human-machine interface to a process they can actually disrupt, and almost nobody is testing for that.”
“Frenos is one of the only teams I’ve seen build a platform that thinks in those terms without putting production at risk.”
Robert M. Lee, Frenos Advisory Board Member and Co-Founder and CEO of Dragos
“OT security requires a different approach than traditional IT security. Frenos is helping industrial operators continuously validate cyber resilience without putting production at risk.”
Michael Dolbec, Managing Partner at Momenta
“Traditional IT security tools fail in industrial settings, but Frenos delivers the precise, safe visibility operators need to manage risk without threatening production.”
Carlos Furlotti, Principal at Exposition Ventures
