Glasgow Cyber Deception Startup Lupovis Secures £1.4m Series A at £6.6m Valuation

Lupovis Limited, a Glasgow-based cybersecurity startup specialising in artificial intelligence-driven threat detection, has successfully closed a £1.4m Series A funding round. The latest capital injection gives the company a post-money valuation of £6.6m. Filings confirm the shares were allotted on March 18, 2026, and officially registered today.

Founded in May 2021 by Xavier Bellekens and Ivan Andonovic as a spin-out from the University of Strathclyde, Lupovis operates a proactive "Deception as a Service" platform. The company addresses the growing need for early threat identification by deploying dynamic decoys and digital breadcrumbs across a network. These traps are designed to lure cyber attackers and ransomware away from high-value assets, effectively turning the hunter into the hunted.

Once an adversary penetrates a network, the Lupovis system engages them in a controlled offensive deception environment. The platform uses artificial intelligence to create scenarios that mirror the existing infrastructure of an organisation. This tricks the attacker into believing they are progressing towards valuable assets, gathering critical threat intelligence regarding their techniques and behaviour while buying the target organisation valuable time to implement countermeasures. The company primarily targets sectors that manage highly sensitive data and face complex network environments, including critical national infrastructure, financial services, and higher education institutions.

Financial and operational metrics indicate a lean, highly specialised operation. The company's latest accounts report a headcount of 10 employees, while current professional networking profiles suggest the team has recently grown to 16 staff members.

This £1.4m Series A round represents a steady progression in the company's funding history. Lupovis previously secured a pre-seed investment of over £615,000 in late 2021, which was co-led by Techstart Ventures and Nauta Capital, with participation from the University of Strathclyde. The company also completed a subsequent seed round in early 2024. While the specific investors participating in this new Series A allotment have not been publicly disclosed in the latest filings, the £6.6m valuation demonstrates sustained confidence in the firm's proprietary deception technology.

The funding arrives at a pivotal moment for the UK cybersecurity sector, which is currently experiencing a surge in corporate investment. According to the KPMG Global Tech Report published in January 2026, cybersecurity has overtaken artificial intelligence as the primary focus for corporate technology spending. The report found that 57 percent of UK organisations plan to increase their cybersecurity budgets by more than 10 percent over the next 12 months, driven by ongoing geopolitical tensions and a string of high-profile data breaches.

Furthermore, recent government sectoral analysis valued the UK cyber security industry's annual revenue at £13.2 billion, noting that the sector now employs over 67,000 people across the country. With corporate boardrooms increasingly prioritising operational resilience, there is a strong market appetite for proactive defence mechanisms rather than purely reactive software.

By combining artificial intelligence with network deception, Lupovis is well-positioned to capitalise on this shifting landscape. The fresh £1.4m capital will allow the company to further enhance the platform's machine learning capabilities, expand the Glasgow-based engineering team, and accelerate commercial penetration within its target enterprise markets across the UK and internationally.