Kevin Mandia

Mandia earned a B.S. in computer science from Lafayette College and an M.S. in forensic science from The George Washington University, and completed Harvard Business School’s OwnerOwnerOwner, also known as Owner.com, is a software company serving independent restaurants and other local businesses. Co-founded by Adam Guild and Dean Bloembergen, it combines websites, online ordering, customer relationship management, marketing and branded mobile apps, later adding point-of-sale systems and AI agents.Open the full entry/President Management Program in February 2013.⁠[1][2]

He served in the U.S. Air Force, first as a computer security officer in the 7th Communications Group at the Pentagon and then as a special agent and cybercrime investigator with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI). He later held senior positions in the security consulting divisions of Sytex (later acquired by Lockheed MartinLockheed MartinLockheed Martin is an American aerospace and defense company whose main businesses include military aircraft, missile defense, rotary-wing aircraft and mission systems, and space systems.Open the full entry) and Foundstone (later acquired by McAfee).⁠[1][2]

Mandia founded Mandiant Corporation in 2004 and grew it to about 500 employees and more than $100 million in revenue. He was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the Greater Washington area in 2011 and a Leading Global Thinker by Foreign Policy in 2013.⁠[1][2]

In December 2013 FireEye acquired Mandiant for about $1 billion, and Mandia joined FireEye as senior vice president and chief operating officer; he was president of FireEye from February 2015 to June 2016 and joined its board in February 2016.⁠[2][1]

In June 2016 Mandia became chief executive of FireEye, and he remained chief executive when the company renamed itself Mandiant, Inc. in October 2021; from December 2021 he served on the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and he has also served on the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC).⁠[1][3]

GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry agreed in 2022 to acquire Mandiant for $5.4 billion; the deal was completed in September 2022, ending Mandia’s board service.⁠[4][1][3]

After Mandiant joined Google Cloud, Mandia remained chief executive of Mandiant until May 2024 and then served as a strategic advisor to Google Cloud until July 2025.⁠[1][4]

In September 2025 Mandia founded the AI cybersecurity company Armadin with co-founders Travis Lanham (chief technology officer), Evan Peña (chief offensive security officer) and David Slater (chief architect). The company surfaced quietly in late 2025 with a $24 million seed round.⁠[4][5]

On March 10, 2026, Armadin announced seed and Series A funding totaling $189.9 million, led by AccelAccelAccel is a venture capital firm co-founded in 1983 by Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz. It invests through regional teams and early-stage, growth and late-stage funds, with operations in the United States, Europe, Israel and India. Its investment history includes Facebook, Flipkart, Atlassian, Slack and other technology businesses. Fundraising totals, regulatory assets under management and portfolio-company transaction values are distinct measures.Open the full entry with participation from Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Menlo Ventures and In-Q-Tel and follow-on investment from 8VC and Ballistic Ventures. The company uses autonomous AI-agent “attacker swarms” to find and exploit weaknesses in customers’ systems the way attackers would.⁠[6]

Mandia said, “I believe within the next few years virtually all cyberattacks will be AI-based,” adding, “In a world of machine-speed attacks, defense must become autonomous.”⁠[6]

On September 8, 2026, AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry elected Mandia to its board of directors; he joined the security committee, chaired by Dan Huttenlocher, which oversees cybersecurity policy and responses to major incidents, as well as the audit committee.⁠[3][4]

On October 1, 2026, Armadin announced a $255.5 million Series B at a valuation of more than $2.5 billion, co-led by Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry and Accel, with new investors Bain Capital Ventures and Redpoint and participation from existing backers 8VC, Ballistic Ventures, GV, In-Q-Tel, Kleiner Perkins and Menlo Ventures; the Palo Alto, California–based company had raised about $445 million in total.⁠[5]

The same day, a16z’s David GeorgeDavid George (a16z)David George is a venture capitalist and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). After joining from General Atlantic in 2019, he built and leads a16z’s growth-stage investing practice, leading or participating in investments in companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI, Stripe, Roblox and Databricks.Open the full entry and Stephenie Zhang announced a16z’s lead role in the round; Armadin’s first product is Armadin Red. Mandia said, “AI lets an attacker find and chain weaknesses faster than any human team can respond.”⁠[7][5]

On October 6, 2026, the a16z YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel published “The Biggest Shift in Cybersecurity in 30 Years,” released on The a16z Show podcast as “Building Defense for the Agentic Era: Kevin Mandia.” In it, a16z general partner David George and Mandia discussed what happens to cybersecurity when attackers can operate at machine speed.⁠[8][9]

Mandia said that after 30 years in security and building Mandiant, AI convinced him to get back on the field; he explained how AI changes the economics of cyberattacks by letting attackers probe thousands of paths at once, and why defense will ultimately need to become autonomous. The two also discussed Armadin’s approach of continuously attacking customers’ systems with AI to find exploitable vulnerabilities before adversaries do, and of building toward autonomous defenses that respond in real time.⁠[9]

Mandia co-authored two McGraw-Hill books on incident response (2001 and 2003), has taught graduate cybersecurity courses at The George Washington University and Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It grew out of the Carnegie Technical Schools, founded with funding from Andrew Carnegie in 1900, which were renamed the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1912 and took the present name after merging with the Mellon Institute in 1967. The university is known for computer science, robotics, engineering, and the arts, and has campuses in Qatar, Silicon Valley, and Rwanda. As of September 2025, it enrolled 16,582 students. Its current president is Farnam Jahanian. On September 30, 2026, the university announced a $3 billion gift from Ken Griffin and plans to build a new campus in Miami.Open the full entry, and has testified as an expert in U.S. federal court and before the House and Senate intelligence committees. He is also a co-founder and general partner of Ballistic Ventures, a venture firm that funds and mentors security founders.⁠[2][3]