Edward Wu

Founder & CEO Dropzone AI

Last Reviewed: September 24, 2026

Executive Summary

Edward Wu is the founder and chief executive of Dropzone AI, a Seattle company that builds AI agents to investigate security alerts autonomously, doing the tier-one triage work that security operations centres (SOCs) otherwise leave to human analysts. He came to it from eight years at ExtraHop Networks, where he led the AI/ML detection work that took the company from network performance monitoring into network detection and response. His founding argument is that detection had stopped being the bottleneck: surfacing more alerts does not help a team that cannot investigate the ones it already has. Dropzone AI has raised a seed round, a Series A and a $37 million Series B led by Theory Ventures, and reported 11x ARR growth in 2025 with more than 300 enterprises running its AI analysts in production.

Career Highlights

• Founder and CEO of Dropzone AI, headquartered in Seattle.
• Announced a $3.5 million seed round led by Decibel Partners in August 2023, with ExtraHop co-founder Jesse Rothstein and Duo Security co-founder Jon Oberheide among the angel investors.
• Raised a $16.85 million Series A led by Theory Ventures in April 2024, with In-Q-Tel participating and Tomasz Tunguz joining the board.
• Raised a $37 million Series B led by Theory Ventures in July 2025, joined by Madrona, Decibel, Pioneer Square Labs and IQT.
• Reported 11x ARR growth for 2025, more than 300 enterprises in production and a place on the Fortune Cyber 60.
• Spent eight years at ExtraHop Networks leading AI/ML detection capabilities.

Professional Journey

Wu’s background is in security research. His company biography describes work on automated binary analysis and software defences at UC Berkeley and the University of Washington, and Dropzone AI’s own account of its founding says he left a computer science Ph.D. programme at the University of Washington to join ExtraHop Networks, the Seattle network monitoring company.

He spent eight years at ExtraHop leading the development of its AI/ML detection capabilities and led the company’s transition from network performance monitoring to network detection and response, detecting attacks from network wire data. His biography credits him with more than 30 patents in machine learning and cybersecurity and contributions to MITRE ATT&CK, the widely used public catalogue of attacker techniques.

The idea for Dropzone came from the limits of that work. In the company’s telling, a SOC manager told him that surfacing an alert did not change the game; what the team needed was help understanding the alerts it already had. Wu founded Dropzone AI to put large language models to work on that investigation step, reinforcing SOC teams as if they had an unlimited supply of tier-one analysts. The company emerged publicly in August 2023 with a $3.5 million seed round led by Decibel Partners, backed by angels including ExtraHop co-founder Jesse Rothstein.

Theory Ventures led a $16.85 million Series A in April 2024, with In-Q-Tel, the US intelligence community’s investment arm, participating, and a $37 million Series B in July 2025, with the company naming customers including UiPath and Zapier. In January 2026 Dropzone AI reported that 2025 had brought 11x ARR growth, more than 300 enterprises processing alerts in production and a doubled workforce, and that Amit Patel had been appointed chief revenue officer. Wu said at the time that the company’s AI SOC analysts had recovered more than $10 million of SOC productivity for customers. The company has since added an AI threat hunter to its platform.

Education

No completed degree was found. Dropzone AI’s materials say he left a computer science Ph.D. programme at the University of Washington to join ExtraHop, and that his earlier research was carried out at UC Berkeley and the University of Washington, without naming a degree from either.