Socket raises USD $60 million to tackle code risks

Socket has raised USD $60 million in Series C funding at a USD $1 billion valuation, with Thrive Capital leading the round.

The financing gives the software supply chain security company unicorn status as businesses adopt AI coding tools and face a growing volume of third-party code entering production systems. Other investors included a16z, Abstract Ventures and Capital One Ventures.

Founded in 2020, Socket sells software that analyses open source dependencies before they enter an organisation's codebase. Its approach is designed to detect malicious behaviour and other supply chain risks in real time, rather than relying solely on vulnerability databases that often flag problems only after public disclosure.

Based in San Francisco, the company counts Anthropic, xAI, Replit, Cursor, Figma, Vercel, Gusto, Mercado Libre and Cribl among its customers, along with Fortune 100 companies in financial services and global media.

Rising concern

The funding comes amid broader concern over the risks created by the growing use of open source components in software development. Socket cited findings from the OWASP Top 10:2025 community survey, which ranked software supply chain failures as the top concern, as well as a Linux Foundation report showing that only 36% of organisations evaluate the direct dependencies of open source code before using a new component.

The issue has become more pressing as AI tools increase both the speed of software development and the amount of externally sourced code reaching production environments. For security teams, the challenge is to review that code without creating bottlenecks for developers.

Recent events have sharpened that focus. Socket said it identified a malicious dependency linked to the compromise of Axios, a widely used JavaScript package, within six minutes and worked with users and customers to block the package from entering their environments.

According to the company, more than 2,000 organisations joined its platform within 24 hours of the incident. The episode showed how quickly malicious code in a popular dependency can spread across software projects.

AI and Security

Socket said its platform combines AI-assisted analysis with human verification to help teams identify malicious behaviour, prioritise exploitable vulnerabilities and remediate dependency risk.

The company argues that AI is changing the balance of software development by increasing output and expanding the use of code created outside an organisation. That, in turn, has pushed software supply chain security higher up the priority list for large businesses.

"AI is changing how software gets built at every level," said Feross Aboukhadijeh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Socket. "Teams are moving faster, more code is being generated, and more of what ends up in production now comes from outside the company. The hard part is keeping that speed without losing visibility into what's actually getting shipped, and that's where Socket comes in."

Thrive Capital framed the investment as a response to a security environment in which threats can emerge and spread faster than older defensive models were built to handle.

"Security is changing radically and rapidly," said Philip Clark, Partner at Thrive Capital. "Legacy tools were designed to react to known vulnerabilities and assumed there was sufficient time to prevent a breach. Today, AI models can identify vulnerabilities so well and so quickly that this is no longer an option. We need tools like Socket that can identify threats in third-party code before they enter production, and we believe there is no team better positioned to meet that demand."