Madrid-based cybersecurity company 8Layers has secured a further €1 million in funding through an extension of its pre-Seed round, bringing the company's total capital raised to €2.5 million. The new investment will support the expansion of its go-to-market strategy and accelerate the commercial rollout of its platform across Europe.
The round introduces two new strategic investors from Spain's corporate venture capital ecosystem: Criteria Venture Tech, the venture capital arm of CriteriaCaixa, one of the country's largest investment holding groups, and Bankinter.
The extension follows the company's initial €1.5 million pre-Seed financing completed in 2025.
The founders spent more than a decade at Devo building security data infrastructure at massive scale, repeatedly witnessing the same challenge: enterprises overwhelmed by identities they could neither see, govern nor protect. They founded 8Layers to solve that problem. At Criteria Venture Tech, we are proud to support the company as it extends its pre-seed round to €2.5 million.
8Layers serves as a unified identity security layer across an enterprise's identity providers, connecting every human and non-human identity—from service accounts to AI agents—into a single intelligent data model. Instead of relying on fragmented point solutions, security teams gain Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR), and continuous compliance within a single platform, eliminating the need for spreadsheets and manually stitched-together investigations.
With machine identities now outnumbering human identities by 50 to 1, and AI agents multiplying every day, identity has become the enterprise's control plane. This team has already built the data infrastructure needed to secure it once. Now they are doing it again, purpose-built for the age of AI agents.
“We have just launched the platform commercially, and we are very proud to welcome two strategic partners who know first-hand the problem we solve. Their entry is not just an investment: it is confirmation, from within the financial sector itself, that digital identity security is now a top-level priority,” says Daniel García Morán, CEO and co-founder of 8Layers.
The financing comes amid sustained investment momentum across Europe's cybersecurity, digital identity and compliance technology sectors throughout 2026.
Recent transactions reported by EU-Startups include Madrid-based Sybol, which raised more than €1 million to develop corporate digital identity infrastructure; Spain's Zepo Intelligence, which secured a €12.8 million Seed round for its AI-powered social engineering defence platform; Barcelona-based NeuralTrust, which closed a €17.2 million Seed round focused on enterprise AI security; Prague-headquartered Wultra, which raised €6.8 million in Series A funding to expand its post-quantum authentication and digital identity wallet technologies; and French company MokN, which completed a €12.9 million Series A round for its credential theft protection platform.
Together, these transactions represent approximately €112.3 million in disclosed funding during 2026, rising to around €113.3 million when including 8Layers' latest investment. The company's fundraising also reinforces Spain's growing presence within the European cybersecurity ecosystem, alongside recent rounds completed by Sybol, Zepo Intelligence and NeuralTrust.
Founded in 2024, 8Layers develops technology designed to protect digital identities, one of the most exposed assets within modern organisations and one of the primary targets of today's cyberattacks.
Commercially launched in May 2026, the company's platform combines Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR), and automated compliance with key European cybersecurity frameworks and regulations, including ENS, NIS2 and ISO 27001, within a single solution.
The company was founded by Daniel García Morán, Pedro Palao, Pablo Carretero and Iago Salgado, who collectively bring more than two decades of experience in cybersecurity and scalable software systems. Three of the founders were previously part of the founding team behind Devo, the Spanish DeepTech unicorn.
According to the company, the participation of two major institutions from Spain's financial sector provides strong validation of its market proposition. Financial institutions, faced with increasing levels of identity-based cyberattacks and an evolving regulatory environment shaped by the National Security Framework (ENS) and the European Union's NIS2 Directive, increasingly view digital identity protection as a strategic business priority.
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Madrid-based cybersecurity company 8Layers has secured a further €1 ...
