Berlin-based cybersecurity startup Kazimi has raised €2.2 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round to develop technology that helps mobile app developers determine whether activity comes from genuine users or automated and manipulated systems.
The round was led by European venture capital firm Market One Capital, with participation from IBB Ventures and executives with backgrounds in the mobile technology industry. The individual investors identified in connection with the round include former Rovio CTO Petri Hyökyranta, former Supercell data scientist Janne Peltola, and former Birkenstock Group and Sportradar CFO Erik Massmann. Vestbee also reported participation from Dilpesh Parmar and Adnaan Ebrahim.
Kazimi, founded in Berlin in 2024, said the new funding will be used to scale its technology and expand into the global mobile advertising market. The company is targeting a problem that affects advertising, analytics and other systems that depend on mobile-app data: determining whether the information being generated by an application comes from a legitimate environment or has been manipulated.
The company’s platform is built around a software library that developers integrate into their mobile applications. Kazimi says the library assesses the security and integrity of the environment in which the application is running and generates an encrypted signal that can be attached to data sent from the app to the developer’s backend.
That signal can then be verified through Kazimi’s server-side API. According to the company’s FAQ, the process is designed to provide information about the environment in which a signal was generated without requiring personally identifiable information to establish its humanity and security characteristics.
Kazimi says its technology is designed to identify a range of conditions that can be associated with manipulated app activity. These include device emulation, device instrumentation, rooted or jailbroken devices, cloned or modified applications, reverse engineering, code injection, debugging, spoofing and replay attacks.
The company describes its approach as a way for developers to secure and verify their own first-party data instead of relying entirely on information supplied by third-party measurement and analytics services. Kazimi’s system is designed to work alongside mobile measurement partners rather than replace them. The company says it does not ingest advertising-engagement data or provide attribution services, but can provide verified session and install information that developers can use to compare against data from other systems.
The issue is closely connected to long-established forms of mobile advertising fraud. AppsFlyer describes bots as software that can simulate activities such as advertising clicks, installs and in-app engagement, while its material on SDK spoofing documents how fraudulent actors can manufacture installs and in-app events by falsifying information sent through mobile applications.
Kazimi’s founding team has direct experience with that problem. The company identifies Chase Gummer as chief executive officer, Andreas Naumann as chief product officer, August Joseph as chief technology officer and Ville Mikkola as chief operating officer. Kazimi says members of the team previously worked on security and fraud-detection systems at Adjust, the mobile measurement company that was acquired by AppLovin in 2021 in a deal valued at about $1 billion.
Naumann previously worked as a fraud specialist at Adjust, where he focused on mobile advertising fraud. Mikkola was appointed head of the Coalition Against Ad Fraud at Adjust in 2020. The industry group was formed to develop approaches to mobile advertising fraud and had about 30 members at the time. Mikkola had also worked in mobile advertising and adtech, including roles at Glispa and YeahMobi, before later working at AppsFlyer.
German corporate records show that the company was initially established as KAZIMI UG (haftungsbeschränkt) on August 15, 2024. The business later changed its legal form and name to KAZIMI GmbH. Corporate records also show changes to its management team and registered capital, which was increased to €34,224 in June 2026. The company’s registered address is listed as Heidestraße 34 in Berlin.
Kazimi said its technology is already being used by mobile gaming studios, rewards platforms and fintech applications, although the company has not publicly identified those customers in its funding announcement.
The startup has also reported findings from its own customer data. In a company statement, Kazimi said more than 13% of installs were spoofed per month on average among the applications it was observing. That figure is a claim made by Kazimi based on its own data and does not represent an independently verified industry-wide rate.
Privacy is another part of the company’s positioning. Kazimi says its technology does not require personally identifiable information for its proof-of-humanness approach and does not require additional application permissions. It also says its signals are encrypted and that developers retain control over their first-party data. The company’s privacy statement identifies the company as KAZIMI GmbH, registered in Berlin under HRB 267675 B.
The funding comes as concerns about automated Internet activity continue to grow. Cloudflare reported in 2026 that non-human traffic had surpassed human traffic on the Internet. That measurement covers broader Internet traffic and should not be interpreted as a finding that bots account for more than half of mobile-app activity.
Kazimi is positioning its technology as a security layer for mobile applications rather than as a replacement for existing analytics or attribution systems. Its stated focus is on establishing whether the data generated by an application can be trusted before developers use it for advertising decisions, analytics, live operations, monetization or other systems that depend on first-party information.
The company has also announced a partnership with Hardal, a server-side measurement platform. Kazimi said the relationship is intended to combine Hardal’s server-side measurement capabilities with its approach to bot detection and first-party-data security.
Market One Capital partner Jacek Łubiński described Kazimi’s potential in terms of becoming a security layer for the app economy. The company itself similarly argues that reliable first-party data will become increasingly important as businesses rely more heavily on automated systems and artificial intelligence.
The immediate focus for Kazimi, however, remains the mobile ecosystem. With €2.2 million in fresh funding, a team with previous experience in mobile fraud prevention and customers across gaming, rewards and fintech, the Berlin startup is now aiming to expand its technology and commercial reach in the mobile advertising market.
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