Gotcha! French cybersecurity startup MokN tricks attackers into surrendering stolen credentials, raises €2.6 million to expand to the U.S.

MokN, a Paris-based cybersecurity startup launched in 2024, has raised €2.6 million in Seed funding to expand its deception-based identity protection technology and initiate its commercial rollout in the United States.

The round was led by Moonfire, with participation from OVNI Capital, Kima Ventures, and several notable business angels.

“The project was born out of a cyber crisis I experienced in a previous role, which highlighted that a seemingly obvious approach was still missing from the market. In less than a year, fully bootstrapped, we proved the value of our solution with major enterprises. Our technical DNA allows us to speak expert to expert, which has accelerated our growth. Today, with proven technology, strong traction, and no direct competition in the U.S., we see a unique opportunity ahead,” said Gautier Bugeon, Co-founder and CEO of MokN.

The MokN funding round fits into a broader trend of early-stage investment across the European cybersecurity, identity, and fraud prevention space in 2025.

Startups are tackling overlapping challenges such as autonomous cyber defense (€2.1 million for WiseBee), synthetic threat intelligence and AI fraud detection (€3.7 million for Innerworks), misuse detection (€936k for Egregious), biometric authentication (€1.9 million for Keyless), fraud prevention (€6 million for Trustfull), business identity verification (€10 million for Duna), and digital anonymity (€1.8 million for Dold Adress).

MokN’s focus on deceiving attackers to neutralise stolen credentials represents a distinct approach compared to these peers, which are more often centred on reactive detection, identity verification, or fraud analytics.

The startup has developed a proactive method to tackle the increasing problem of stolen credentials by turning the tables on attackers: instead of blocking them, MokN lures cybercriminals into revealing the very data they’ve just stolen. Already adopted by over 20 enterprises – the solution has propelled the bootstrapped company to more than €1 million ARR in under a year.

“Identity theft is one of the fastest-growing and most damaging cyber threats, yet it’s almost impossible to recover stolen credentials before they’re abused. MokN is tackling this head-on with ingenious deception technology that turns attackers’ own tactics against them. Their rapid progress highlights both the urgency of the problem and the strength of their product. We’re proud to back their U.S. expansion“, said Akshat Goenka, Partner at Moonfire.

Founded in 2023 by Gautier Bugeon, MokN was born out of firsthand experience during a cyber crisis, which exposed a blind spot in traditional defence strategies.

The startup’s innovation lies in its “phish-back” technology: hyper-realistic decoy portals (for example, fake VPN or email login pages) are set up within a company’s network. When an attacker uses stolen credentials on one of these decoys, they unwittingly alert the security team – often before the credentials are sold or used elsewhere.

As per the company, the timing couldn’t be more relevant. According to the 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, compromised credentials remain the leading cause of data breaches. Nearly 65% of cyberattacks result in financial harm, and traditional defensive measures struggle to keep pace with evolving threat vectors.

MokN’s trap-based strategy aims to give security teams a chance to intervene at the earliest possible stage – when the attacker first attempts to test the stolen credentials.

MokN’s early traction is especially notable considering the company remained self-funded until now. In just over 12 months, it has attracted a roster of enterprise clients, and protected more than 500,000 users.

“We knew attackers were targeting us, but never had direct proof. Within days of deploying MokN, we intercepted credentials that had just been stolen, before any public exposure. These insights now help us reinforce our detection strategy and communicate risk clearly to the board,” said a security leader at a French multinational.

With this Seed round secured, the French startup now sets its sights on the United States – an under-served market for deception-based credential protection. Part of MokN’s leadership team will relocate stateside to be closer to its future customers.

The company also plans to scale its team in France, recruiting across product, sales, and marketing to support its dual-continent growth.

“MokN’s approach redefines the early detection of credential-based threats. Their fast deployment, signal quality, and seamless SOC integration make them a compelling new layer in the modern identity-first security stack,” added Augustin Sayer, Managing Partner at OVNI Capital.

With no direct competitors currently offering a similar proactive deception strategy in the U.S., MokN appears well positioned to make a mark on the global cybersecurity landscape – and stay one step ahead of the hackers.

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