Copia Automation secures $26M to protect industrial code

What happened?

Copia Automation, a startup based in New York, announced the closing of a $26 million Series B funding round. The investment was led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from Schneider Electric and Existing Investors. The company offers a platform that modernizes code management in operational technology (OT) environments, specifically for programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and other industrial devices. According to The Next Web, the company was founded in 2019 by former Siemens and GE Digital engineers, and had previously raised $12 million in earlier rounds. The Series B brings the total to $38 million, a modest figure compared to the $100 million that OT cybersecurity startups often raise, but significant for such a specific niche.

Why is it important?

Historically, the code that controls factories, power plants, and production lines has been managed in a rudimentary way: backups on laptops, folders named 'final_backup_2', or even without versioning. This lack of control exposes companies to serious risks: from human errors that halt production to ransomware attacks that encrypt critical code. Copia Automation applies modern software development principles (version control, continuous integration, change detection) to the industrial world, where chaos has reigned until now.

According to company data, 60% of manufacturers still manage their PLC backups manually, and 30% have no backup at all. In a context where cyberattacks on critical infrastructure are on the rise (such as the Colonial Pipeline attack in 2021), protecting OT code has become a strategic priority. A 2025 Dragos report noted that OT incidents increased 40% year-over-year, and 70% of them involved code manipulation. Copia's solution not only prevents these attacks but also accelerates recovery: according to the company, the average restoration time drops from days to minutes.

What consequences will it have?

The capital injection will allow Copia to expand its sales and engineering teams and accelerate integration with more PLC brands (Allen-Bradley, Siemens, etc.). The entry of Schneider Electric as a strategic investor suggests that major industrial players see value in this solution. It's no coincidence: Schneider had already invested in the Series A of the French startup Plaid (not to be confused with the fintech) and seeks to strengthen its industrial automation ecosystem. In the short term, we will see more industrial plants adopting DevOps tools adapted to OT, which will reduce incident recovery time and improve operational resilience.

For CISOs and plant managers, the lesson is clear: industrial code must be treated with the same seriousness as software code. Copia Automation offers a solution that not only protects but also audits changes and facilitates regulatory compliance (NERC CIP, IEC 62443). Additionally, the platform already has integrations for PLCs from Siemens, Allen-Bradley, Schneider Electric, and Mitsubishi, covering more than 80% of the global market. The company claims to have over 200 customers, including automotive manufacturers and energy companies, though it does not disclose names.

Competition in the OT space is intensifying: Claroty focuses on network visibility, Nozomi on threat detection, and Dragos on threat intelligence. Copia, on the other hand, occupies a code management niche that was previously underserved. However, companies like PTC and Siemens also offer versioning tools, but integrated into their own ecosystems. Copia's advantage is its vendor independence, allowing management of heterogeneous code from a single platform.

What should readers know?

• It's not just a backup: The platform includes anomaly detection, version comparison, and one-click restoration. It also offers a dashboard showing the status of all PLCs in real time.
• Integration with existing systems: It works with the most common PLCs and does not require hardware replacement. It connects via standard protocols like OPC-UA or through lightweight agents.
• SaaS model: It can be deployed in the cloud or on-premise, depending on each client's security needs. The on-premise version is popular among critical infrastructure companies that cannot send data to the cloud.
• Competition: Companies like Claroty, Nozomi Networks, and Dragos focus on OT network monitoring, but Copia focuses on the code itself, a less saturated niche. Other startups like OTBase or Codebeamer offer similar solutions but with less traction.
• Funding: The Series B comes at a time of investor caution, where only startups with clear traction manage to raise capital. The fact that Bessemer, a fund with experience in SaaS (Twilio, Shopify), leads the round is a sign of confidence in the business model.

In summary, Copia Automation is doing for industrial code what GitHub did for software code: making it visible, versioned, and secure. The $26 million is a sign that the OT market is ready for this transformation. However, it remains to be seen whether the startup can scale before industrial giants integrate similar features into their own products. For now, the wind is in its favor: factory digitization and regulatory pressure are pushing companies to adopt modern code management tools. Copia has the opportunity to become the de facto standard, but it must execute quickly.