After an 18-month period of obscurity, AvalonX launched a continuous, enterprise-level penetration testing service aimed at providing security testing for small and medium-sized enterprises. This platform combines proprietary security AI trained on nine years of real-world attack and defense data with professional human expertise, with the goal of identifying potential intrusion paths before cybercriminals launch attacks.
Alphalita, Georgia, USA, October 30th ( PRNewswire ) – AI Security startup AvalonX today ended its 18-month stealth period and released its continuous, AI-driven penetration testing platform. This platform is powered by security AI trained on nine years of real-world attack and defense data, aiming to enable small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to access the kind of offensive security testing that has long been reserved for large corporations, without the need for a corporate-level security team or a substantial budget.
Smaller organizations face similar attack vectors to larger enterprises, but they typically have smaller teams, less funding, and fewer opportunities to test whether their defenses are sufficient to withstand attacks. Many of these organizations rely on periodic penetration testing, which means there are long gaps between assessments, while systems, software, and threats are constantly evolving.
The gap between attack speed and penetration testing speed may expose these companies to risks. According to the 2025 "Data Breach Survey Report," ransomware was involved in 88% of breaches involving small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); in large organizations, this proportion is 39%. AvalonX indicates that the initial intention of the company was to make continuous penetration testing, which combines automated attack simulations with human professional judgment, more accessible to small businesses through a monthly subscription model, in order to bridge this gap.
"Large enterprises will continue to test. They have red teams, consultants, and matching budgets. A 50-person accounting firm or a regional manufacturer faces the same threats as large enterprises, but they don't have the corresponding resources to protect themselves. Most of these organizations, if they can afford it, only test once a year, and attackers won't wait 11 months to strike," said AvalonX, CEO and co-founder of Craig Goodwin. He has previously worked at Fujitsu, Monster, and CDK Global. "We created AvalonX to provide these companies with the same quality of testing that I relied on during my time at CISO."
The Artemis platform, which uses autonomous proxies, tests corporate defenses in the manner of malicious actors to find intrusion paths and determine how far attackers can advance once they have gained access. This platform is driven by Aether, a proprietary 400 billion-parameter security system developed by AvalonX. It is trained based on nine years of real-world attack and defense data and is supported by 60 billion records from the dark web.
Autonomous testing provides speed and scale, while the penetration testers of AvalonX intervene with manual judgment when necessary. Potential vulnerabilities that require expert analysis are evaluated by the testers to ensure that clients receive meaningful and actionable findings, rather than just a pile of automated alerts.
Despite the technical complexity, the customer experience is deliberately designed to be very simple. Enterprises simply enter their domain names and define the scope allowed for testing with AvalonX, and they can receive results on the same day. No software installation is required for external testing; the results are presented in plain language, accompanied by clear instructions for further steps. Any issues found are also mapped to SOC, ISO, IEC 27001, v4.0, and HIPAA.
Ridown Capital —— Onecom Co-founders Aaron Brown and the investment institutions under Darren Ridge have invested up to $10 million in AvalonX. Onecom provides services to over 65,000 small and medium-sized enterprises, which gives Brown and Ridge direct insight into the technical and security challenges faced by these companies.
"At Onecom, we have been serving small and medium-sized enterprises for twenty years, and now we have over 65,000 clients. What we hear is always the same: they are attacked just like larger companies, yet they lack the resources that startups usually have," says Brown. " AvalonX was created from the very beginning for them. That's why we support it."
Their investment continues the broader direction of Brown and Ridge, which is to bring enterprise-level capabilities to smaller businesses. The business portfolio of Ridown Group covers telecommunications, network security, and e-commerce, with revenues in the UK alone exceeding 500 million pounds.
“Aaron and I have been providing enterprise-level capabilities to small businesses at reasonable prices throughout our careers,” Ridge explained. “Craig and his team have achieved this in the field of network security. We are proud to be able to help bring such capabilities to those businesses that have historically been excluded from such tests due to cost considerations.”
AvalonX is led by seasoned cybersecurity experts Craig Goodwin, Ricardo Valdes, and Ben O ('Nion'), who collectively possess over 50 years of experience in information security and technology.
AvalonX is now available for use. Enterprises can conduct free initial tests at www.avalonx.ai.
About AvalonX
AvalonX Inc is an offensive security startup based in Alpharetta, Georgia, driven by AI, and has received up to $10 million in support from Ridown Capital. After remaining stealth for 18 months, the company officially went public in October 2026. Its Artemis platform is powered by a proprietary Aether security AI algorithm, which is trained on nine years of real-world attack and defense data. This algorithm combines autonomous testing agents with manual verification to provide affordable, continuous, and on-demand penetration testing services for small and medium-sized enterprises. For more information, please visit www.avalonx.ai.
About Ridown Capital
Ridown Capital is the investment department of Ridown Group, led by Aaron Brown and Darren Ridge. The group's business portfolio covers telecommunications, network security, and e-commerce, with revenues in the UK alone exceeding 500 million pounds. It includes Onecom, one of the largest independent enterprise communication service providers in the UK, serving over 65,000 businesses.
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