Peter Garraghan

Dr Peter Garraghan founded Mindgard in 2022 to commercialize more than a decade of AI security research at Lancaster University, where he is chair professor in AI security. He led the company as chief executive through its early funding. In October 2025 Mindgard appointed James Brear, a cybersecurity executive who previously led Swimlane, as CEO, and Garraghan became chief science officer, focused on the company’s long-term research.

Garraghan is a fellow of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and has written more than 60 scientific papers on AI, according to the company.

Attacking AI to defend it

Mindgard tests AI models, agents and applications the way an attacker would. Its platform combines automated red-teaming with discovery of the AI tools in use across an organization, assessment, runtime protection and model scanning. Its research team has publicly disclosed more than 150 vulnerabilities in AI products, including a zero-day code execution flaw in the Cursor code editor, a trusted-workspace flaw in Google Antigravity and guardrail failures in ChatGPT’s image generation.

When Brear joined, Garraghan set out the problem the company is built around: “AI is everywhere yet organizations can’t find it, can’t measure it, and can’t secure it.”

A $30m Series A

On 12 August 2026 Mindgard announced a $30m (£22.4m) Series A led by Album VC, with Karma Ventures, .406 Ventures, Atlantic Bridge, IQ Capital and Lakestar. Tech Funding News put its total funding at nearly $42m. The company says it is deployed at Fortune 2000 companies in financial services, pharmaceuticals, gaming, semiconductors and healthcare. It has headquarters in Boston and London and keeps its research operation at Lancaster.

Mindgard plans to use the money to scale product, engineering, sales and marketing. Album VC partner Ty Boswell said the company “has translated deep research and elite offensive-security expertise into a continuously evolving capability”.

Why it matters to UK technology buyers

As UK organizations move AI from pilots into customer-facing systems and agents, the attack surface moves with it: prompts, tools, models and the data they can reach. Mindgard gives security teams a way to test those systems continuously, using a live catalog of attack techniques drawn from its own disclosures, rather than relying on a one-off assessment before launch.

Garraghan’s contribution is the research base that gives Mindgard its credibility with buyers. The split of roles leaves him where his record is strongest, on the science, as a commercial chief executive takes the company to scale.