Mahdi Abdulrazak is Co-Founder and CEO of Dawnguard, an AI-native cybersecurity platform pioneering design-first, secure-by-design cloud architecture for the modern enterprise.

Mahdi began hacking systems at age 15 out of curiosity, which evolved into a 30-year career spanning ethical hacking, risk management, and serving as Group Information Security and Risk Officer at SHV Energy; he also holds a degree from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University.

A former board member of CISO Platform Nederland and ambassador to ECSO, Mahdi is a recognized thought leader and angel investor in the cybersecurity space who coined the concept of the Mythos Era to describe the accelerating AI-driven threat landscape.

Mahdi co-founded Dawnguard in 2025 alongside CTO Kim van Lavieren, drawing on shared experience from IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, and military cyber operations to build a platform that embeds security into system architecture from day zero.

Dawnguard has raised $6.3M in pre-seed funding, publicly launched its platform in 2026, opened a New York City office, and won four categories at the Global Cyber Startup Showcase at RSA Security Conference 2026, including Most Promising Startup and Most Innovative Idea.