LinkedIn post by Ryan Chow · Jun 2026
Ryan Chow announced a partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory and AFRL/RI Information Institute on embedded systems cybersecurity and binary analysis.
Company research
Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals
Updated Jul 29, 2026
Overview
Metalware is a San Francisco-based YC-backed firmware cybersecurity startup building an autonomous binary pentesting platform for embedded systems. The product helps teams upload firmware binaries and get reproducible crashes, stack traces, and remediation outputs for critical infrastructure and defense use cases.
Primary product
Autonomous binary pentesting / firmware security platform
Founded
2023
Headquarters
2261 Market Street, #5308, San Francisco, CA 94114, United States
Team size
1-10
Industry
Software Development
Sub-industry
Firmware cybersecurity / embedded systems security
Offices
2261 Market Street, #5308, San Francisco, CA 94114, United States
Business model
B2B enterprise software
Security SaaS
Sales-led, demo-driven
Funding
Stage
Seed
Latest round
Seed · Apr 2025
Apr 2025
Jul 2023 · Liquid 2 Ventures and Pioneer Fund
Jan 2023
People & investors
Work & culture
Highly technical, research-heavy, mission-driven team focused on firmware security for critical infrastructure, government, and defense customers.
Compensation
Public hiring signal: Founding Engineer in San Francisco with a listed range of $120K-$180K salary plus 0.10%-0.60% equity.
Product & market
Pricing
Public pricing is not listed; appears to be quote-based / demo-led enterprise sales.
Differentiators
- —Autonomous binary pentesting for firmware
- —No source code, hardware, or test harness required
- —Produces reproducible crash inputs and stack traces
- —Integrates into CI/CD for nightly fuzzing and PR regression checks
- —Fleetwide assessment and third-party firmware supply-chain analysis
- —Tailored services for national-security and defense use cases
Technology
Python
Rust
HDL-related tooling
Language Server Protocol tooling
MMIO / firmware analysis
binary fuzzing
rehosting
symbolic execution
Customers
Aerospace
Defense
Automotive
Telecom
Healthcare
Industrial control
IoT
Government
Critical infrastructure
OT / cyber-physical systems
Competitors
Eclypsium
Armis
Upstream Security
Scale & contact
Estimated revenue
~$400K-$500K estimated ARR
Latest news
LinkedIn post by Ryan Chow · May 2026
Ryan Chow announced that Metalware achieved Awardable status in the DoD Platform One marketplace for Cybersecurity and DevSecOps.
Metalware blog · Apr 2026
Metalware describes MMIO fingerprinting with SVDs and LLMs to predict peripheral maps on monolithic firmware.
Metalware blog · Mar 2026
CTO Andrew Nedea explains the company’s firmware fuzzing approach for stripped binaries and exotic architectures.
Metalware blog · Apr 2025
Metalware says it was named one of the Top 10 finalists for the 20th annual RSAC 2025 Innovation Sandbox contest.
Jobs and careers at Metalware
0 jobs at Metalware
No open positions
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