Berlin-based NetBird, an open-source network security platform, today announced a €8.5 million ($10 million) Series A round to scale, hire, and establish itself as a European alternative to US vendors for modern remote access and network security.
The round was led by Pace Capital, with participation from Nauta Capital, InReach Ventures, and Antler.
Tina He, who led the investment at Pace Capital, commented: “Security infrastructure needs to be open, composable and built for how modern organisations actually operate. NetBird is exactly the kind of foundational layer we look for: technically excellent and loved by the technical community. What impressed us most was the quality of adoption. Teams started small and quickly replaced their entire corporate VPN stack.”
Founded in 2021 by Misha Bragin and Maycon Santos, NetBird is a software company developing an open-source Zero Trust network security platform. It combines a WireGuard-based overlay network with Zero Trust Network Access to provide a unified open-source solution for secure connectivity.
The company claims that its entire growth model is based on simplicity. With its solution, teams don’t have to worry about opening ports, centralised gateways or complex firewall configurations, it noted.
According to NetBird, traditional VPNs add complexity with the configuration and management of VPN gateways and firewalls. It stated that its software-defined networking (SDN) eliminates the complexity of managing VPN gateways and firewall configurations, connecting resources directly and securely without single points of failure.
NetBird claims to spend limited resources on marketing and does not operate a traditional sales organisation. Instead, it relies on organic adoption, supported by known community creators and IT-influencers. The company stated that its open-source transparency and self-hosted capabilities turn individual users into advocates.
“NetBird realised that the true decision-makers in modern corporate environments aren’t just executives, they’re the network engineers, DevOps teams, and security practitioners who love to tinker, test, and hack in their own homelabs. They discovered this through the early adoption patterns of their community: long before NetBird reached procurement desks, it was being installed, benchmarked, and stress-tested at home by the very engineers who later championed it inside their organisations,” mentioned the company.
Misha Bragin, CEO and co-founder of NetBird, said, “Enterprise network security has traditionally been gated behind long sales cycles and endless demos before teams can experience real value. We’ve changed that model. At NetBird, the code name for our GTM strategy is ‘Proof of Concept Starts at Home’, meaning that users can try the product for free with minimal friction and experience its value first-hand in their private homelabs before rolling it out to production. Our community has become our strongest advocate, shaping the product far more than any traditional enterprise marketing ever could.”
The fresh funding will be used by the company to scale its platform, expand its engineering and product team, as well as to support customer migration from traditional SSL VPN and firewall solutions.
“We’re already winning deals and migrating customers away from traditional SSL VPN products like Sophos, SonicWall or Fortinet. This funding helps us do it at an even larger scale,” said Maycon Santos, co-founder and CTO, NetBird.
The company also stated that European sovereignty remains an important part of its mission. It positions itself as a European alternative for modern remote access and network security for organisations seeking security infrastructure developed in Europe rather than relying on large US-based vendors.
In 2024, NetBird raised €4 million in a Seed funding round co-led by InReach Ventures and Nauta Capital. It has gained adoption across industries and regions, including managed service providers, high-growth startups, global enterprises, and major European governmental organisations. Sport Alliance, netgo, Signicat and VIEW Group are some of its customers.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/01/berlins-netbird-raises-e8-5-million-europe-open-source-ssl-vpn-giants/
