Giovanni Vignone in Forbes: Winklevosses Are Backing A 22-Year-Old

Hey! Gio here from Octane sharing our most recent news…

We officially launched from stealth raising $6.75m in venture funding from Archetype and Winklevoss Capital with participation from world-class investors including Druid Ventures, Circle, Gemini, Legion Capital, Duke Capital Partners, Balaji Srinivasan, Sina Habibian, and many others.

Here’s a quick excerpt from our Forbes Article:

“Crypto has long been a goldmine for hackers, offering fast, anonymous access to vast sums of money, often through a single line of faulty code. To date, more than $11 billion has been stolen in such exploits, according to DefiLlama. And while smart contract audits are now standard practice, they’re often too slow, too manual and too late.

Giovanni Vignone, 22, saw the opening before even finishing college. While studying computer science and machine learning at Duke University, he understood the challenge firsthand as a founding engineer at Mural, a payments startup previously focused on crypto, launched by Palantir alumni and backed by Michael Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital. He watched teams pour hundreds of thousands into audits only to get exploited anyway. ‘In crypto every hack directly corresponds to the equivalent of a bank account liquidation. It’s like hacking JPMorgan every single time,’ he says. So he dropped out to build Octane, an AI-powered security platform designed to stop attacks before they happen.

Today, the company announced a $6.75 million seed round co-led by Archetype and Winklevoss Capital, the family office of Gemini founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. Other backers include Gemini Frontier Fund, the crypto exchange’s venture arm, Circle, Druid Ventures, Duke Capital Partners and a roster of strategic angels, including former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan.” said Nina Bambysheva.

Read the rest of the article below…

Winklevoss, T., & Winklevoss, C. (2025, April 8). The Winklevosses are backing a 22-year-old using AI to prevent crypto hacks. Forbes.