Socket (software supply chain security)

Socket was founded by Feross Aboukhadijeh, who serves as its CEO. He created the open-source projects WebTorrent and StandardJS, served on the board of the Node.js Foundation and has lectured at Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry. In a May 2026 press release the company said it was founded in 2020.⁠[1][2]

Socket launched publicly in May 2022. Its technology uses “content-based analysis” of how software dependencies behave to catch compromised or hijacked packages, flag dependency updates that introduce new use of risky APIs such as network, shell and filesystem access, and detect malware, typo-squatting, hidden code and permission creep.⁠[3]

In August 2023 Socket raised $20 million in a round 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 with an equity investment from Abstract Ventures, bringing its total since the May 2022 public launch to $24.6 million. At the time Socket also offered ChatGPT-based analysis that examined npm and PyPI packages and summarized the findings.⁠[3]

In October 2024 Socket raised a $40 million Series B led by Abstract Ventures, with participation from Elad GilElad GilElad Gil is an entrepreneur, investor and author of High Growth Handbook. He co-founded Mixer Labs and Color, worked at Google and Twitter, runs the multistage investment firm Gil & Co, and co-hosts the No Priors podcast with Sarah Guo.Open the full entry, Andreessen Horowitz and angel investors including Bret Taylor, Phil Venables and Tobias LütkeTobias LütkeTobias Lütke, who also goes by Tobi Lütke, is a programmer, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Shopify, and a startup investor. He took part in the Ruby on Rails open-source community, has served as Shopify’s CEO since April 2008, and joined the board of Coinbase in 2022.Open the full entry, bringing its total funding to $65 million. The company said it would use the money for product development and to expand its engineering, product and design teams.⁠[4]

Socket then supported six programming languages, including Java and Ruby, blocked more than 100 software supply chain attacks a week and protected more than 7,500 organizations and 300,000 GitHub repositories. Aboukhadijeh said: “We're not just catching vulnerabilities — we're detecting and blocking malicious threats in real time.”⁠[4]

On May 20, 2026 Socket announced a $60 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation, led by Thrive CapitalThrive CapitalThrive Capital is an investment firm led by chief executive Joshua Kushner that builds and invests in internet, software and technology-enabled companies, with investments including Cursor and Chai Discovery. Kushner is also chief executive of Thrive Holdings, a long-term holding company.Open the full entry with participation from a16z, Abstract Ventures and Capital OneCapital OneCapital One Financial Corporation is a diversified financial services holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, with Credit Card, Consumer Banking and Commercial Banking segments; since completing its acquisition of Discover in 2025 it has owned the Discover, PULSE and Diners Club International networks, and its stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.Open the full entry Ventures, bringing its total outside funding to $125 million. Customers it named included AnthropicAnthropicAnthropic is an artificial intelligence research and product company founded in 2021 that develops the Claude models, assistant, and tools such as Claude Code, and operates as a public benefit corporation. Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei are its co-founders, and its research covers model safety, interpretability, and steerability.Open the full entry, xAI, Replit, CursorCursorCursor is the trading name of U.S. AI coding software company Anysphere, Inc. and its namesake coding tool. Founded by Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark and Aman Sanger, it began as an AI-native development environment forked from VS Code and later shifted toward agent-centered coding. Its November 2025 Series D valued the company at $29.3 billion post-money; on August 14, 2026, SpaceX completed an all-stock acquisition at an implied equity value of $60 billion, making Cursor a wholly owned subsidiary.Open the full entry, Figma, VercelVercelVercel is a cloud application development and deployment company founded by Guillermo Rauch in 2015 as ZEIT. It contributes to the open-source React framework Next.js and provides application hosting, deployment and runtime services; its products later expanded to AI SDK, v0 and infrastructure for AI applications. The company adopted its current name in 2020 and raised a $300 million Series F in 2025.Open the full entry, Gusto, Mercado Libre and Cribl, along with Fortune 100 companies in financial services and global media.⁠[2][5]

Socket says it identified the malicious dependency in the Axios compromise within six minutes, and that more than 2,000 organizations onboarded within 24 hours; it also says it blocks more than 1,000 supply chain attacks a week for users. Aboukhadijeh wrote in a blog post that “a lot of what AI produces reaches for open source dependencies developers have never read.”⁠[2][5]

Socket’s products then included Socket Firewall, which blocks risky dependencies before they reach an environment; Socket Reachability, which filters out vulnerabilities that cannot be exploited; Socket Certified Patches, which uses AI to check patches for reliability and installs them with a single command; and a collection of about 130 optimized packages with few or no dependencies. The company planned to use the funding to hire, add integrations with developer tools such as code editors, and release new products.⁠[2][5]

On October 13, 2026 Cursor announced that the app marketplace for its Origin platform integrated more than 20 developer-tool apps, listing Socket Security among its security apps.⁠[6]

Socket’s website lists institutional investors including Thrive Capital, Capital One Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Abstract Ventures, South Park Commons, Village Global, Unusual Ventures and WndrCo, and individual investors including Elad Gil, Dylan Field, Patrick CollisonPatrick CollisonPatrick Collison is an entrepreneur who grew up in Ireland. In 2010 he cofounded the payments and financial infrastructure company Stripe with his brother John Collison and serves as its chief executive; he is also a cofounder of the biomedical research organization Arc Institute and has been a director of Meta since 2025.Open the full entry, John CollisonJohn CollisonJohn Collison (born 1990) is an Irish entrepreneur who co-founded the online payments company Stripe, where he is president, with his older brother Patrick Collison, Stripe’s chief executive. He grew up in County Tipperary and, while still at secondary school, co-founded Auctomatic with his brother, which was sold for $5 million in 2008; he entered Harvard University in 2009, later left, and in 2010 founded Stripe with Patrick. In March 2017 Forbes named him the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. Since June 2025 he has hosted Stripe’s podcast Cheeky Pint, and in October 2026 he was nominated to Microsoft’s board of directors.Open the full entry, Bret Taylor, Jeff Lawson and Ryan Dahl.⁠[1]

The website states that Socket is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and holds U.S. Patent Nos. 12,346,443 and 12,314,394, with other patents pending.⁠[1]

Socket: Official website: https://socket.dev/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

X: Public account: https://x.com/SocketSecurity (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/socketinc (opens in a new window).⁠[1]