Pioneering Aarhus cyber technology acquired by US growth comet

Coana has been acquired by US cybersecurity company Socket in a deal. The acquisition brings Coana’s advanced analytics technology, developed based on research at Aarhus University, into Socket’s rapidly growing software supply chain security platform. Coana and Socket announced this in a press release.

“By joining Socket, we can scale our impact immediately. Together we will help organizations significantly reduce the burden of managing vulnerabilities,” says CEO and co-founder of Coana, Anders Søndergaard.

Coana originates from Aarhus University, where the three founders, Professor of Computer Science Anders Møller and PhDs Benjamin Barslev Nielsen and Martin Torp, embarked on a path of groundbreaking research after encountering a technical breakthrough. They founded Coana in 2021, after which CEO and co-founder Anders Søndergaard also joined.

Removes false security noise

The ambition was to solve one of the biggest challenges in application security: the noise of countless irrelevant warnings about potential vulnerabilities. The team built an analysis method that utilizes reachability analysis – a technique that examines whether a known vulnerability can actually be reached and exploited in a given codebase.

“We founded Coana to give developers a tool that finds 100 critical problems – not 10,000 insignificant ones. Joining Socket enables us to take that vision to the next level. Socket has been a frontrunner in supply chain security, and now together we will deliver reachability analytics at a scale and impact that we could only dream of as a standalone product,” says Martin Torp, CPO at Coana.

In practice, this means that Coana’s tool can cut out up to 80% of the false positives that normally overload development and security teams with irrelevant alerts. Instead, the technology provides a clear and precise overview of which vulnerabilities actually require action. The result is significantly faster response time, better prioritization and lower security risk for software companies.

Acquirer with growth momentum

This precision has attracted international attention, and US-based Socket has now chosen to integrate the technology into their platform with the acquisition of Coana. Socket’s platform is already used by global players such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Vercel and Figma. According to Socket, the acquisition is a strategic move to replace traditional Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools with a new, more intelligent and efficient approach. With Coana in the portfolio, Socket now delivers a complete platform that both prevents real-time supply chain attacks and prioritizes known vulnerabilities with unprecedented accuracy.

“For all those teams drowning in thousands of vulnerability alerts, Coana’s reachability analysis offers a better way forward. They’ve built the most scalable and accurate reachability engine we’ve seen, and we’re excited to integrate it into Socket to give developers precise and actionable insights into vulnerabilities – without the noise. Joining forces with Coana turbocharges our ability to deliver noise-free security alerts that are actually actionable. This is a big win for our customers,” says Feross Aboukhadijeh, CEO and founder of Socket.

He continues:

“Great technology is created by great people. The Coana team shares our values and brings world-class engineering talent to Socket. Together, we will redefine what secure software development should look like.”

For Socket, the acquisition comes in the wake of massive growth. The company recently raised $40 million in a Series B round with participation from investors like a16z and Elad Gil, and has seen more than 300% annual revenue growth.

Indlægget Pioneering Aarhus cyber technology acquired by US growth comet blev først udgivet på TechSavvy.