Echo raises $15M to scale platform for vulnerability-free container images – News

Israeli enterprise-grade software infrastructure startup Echo Inc. announced today that it has raised $15 million in new funding to scale up its platform.

Founded in 2023, Echo is a cybersecurity startup focused on eliminating software vulnerabilities at the source through artificial intelligence-powered infrastructure. The company pitches its offering as pioneering a new approach to vulnerability management, ensuring container base images are built vulnerability-free.

The company offers secure, enterprise-grade container base images that are free of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures by design. The idea is that rather than chasing and patching vulnerabilities after deployment, Echo uses automated AI agents to build clean, minimal images that retain all the functionality of standard open-source base layers while reducing the attack surface.

Echo uses what it calls an AI-driven image factory, a feature that analyzes existing container images, determines the essential components and rebuilds them from scratch without unnecessary or vulnerable packages. The rebuilt images are continuously patched and tested, ensuring they remain secure over time even as new threats emerge.

With the company’s offering, enterprise customers can replace their base image references in Dockerfiles with Echo’s alternatives, gaining instant access to a vulnerability-free environment without changing their existing development workflows or tooling. Echo’s secure base images maintain support for familiar package managers and libc implementations such as glibc, it says, allowing organizations to benefit from improved security posture without sacrificing performance, developer convenience or ecosystem compatibility.

Along with the safety and security aspect of offering filtered container base images, Echo also helps organizations meet stringent compliance requirements. The images are hardened, Federal Information Processing Standards-validated and Security Technical Implementation Guides-compliant, aligning with standards needed for certifications such as the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program.

“Our CVE-free base images enable companies to build applications with a completely clean foundation and via our AI agents, we make sure they stay that way,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Eilon Elhadad. “We’ve reduced the typical vulnerability remediation time from a current industry average of up to 120 days, to just 24 hours – a transformative turnaround for enterprises that’s reflected in customers’ existing scanners and cloud-native application protection platforms.”

The seed round was led by Notable Capital and Hyperwise Ventures, with SVCI also participating.

“Vulnerability management is a $17 billion industry. By offering secure-by-design infrastructure, the industry could unlock billions annually – not to mention the downstream cost savings of preventing potential breaches,” said Oren Yunger, managing partner at Notable Capital. “This is what Echo is championing; a solution that allows businesses the luxury of not thinking about how to manage or mitigate vulnerabilities.”

Image: Echo