Vulnerability-free container image startup Echo acquires Minimus
Echo Software Ltd., a startup that’s using artificial intelligence agents to secure container images, today announced it’s acquiring the assets of Minimus Inc. following the company’s wind-down.
The core proposition of Echo is that it uses AI agents to replace vulnerable upstream open-source components before they’re slotted into production. It does more than simply scan and generate fixes; it completely rebuilds software artifacts to lock them down with vetted repairs, creating a secure supply chain.
The company distributes containerized software images, alongside associated software bill of materials, signatures and attestations. The company provides critical vulnerability-free containers, libraries, operating system packages, virtual machines and Helm charts that act as trusted sources.
Containers are central to software distribution both on-premises and in the cloud. They are lightweight, portable packages that bundle everything software needs to run in production, including application code, runtime, libraries and dependencies. If vulnerabilities or bugs exist in a container or its downstream dependencies, an attacker can exploit them to break into secure systems.
Founded in 2022, Minimus provided cloud-application security through a catalog of minimal, hardened containers. Each of these containers maintained a purpose-built image constructed with only the runtime dependencies needed by an application, omitting anything ancillary such as package managers, shells, compilers or other tooling in order to flense away potential attack surfaces.
“Minimus built meaningful technology around a problem we both believe is fundamental: organizations shouldn’t have to inherit unnecessary security risk simply because they depend on open-source software,” said Echo co-founder and Chief Executive Eilon Elhadad. “When it became clear that Minimus was going to close, we saw an opportunity to make sure that work didn’t disappear.”
Echo notes that its hardened containers and underlying technology work across Linux distributions. Through the acquisition of Minimus, the company said it will be able to expand the number of distributions it can support, becoming a truly distro-agnostic approach to hardened software.
The company said it will add Minimus’s technology and relevant data to its current foundation of AI agents that investigate vulnerabilities, develop and validate patches, and maintain that hardened ecosystem for customers. AI agents depend on fresh, high-quality data to operate accurately, and increasing the width and breadth of that data will give Echo’s agentic AI fleet additional inputs to improve automated vulnerability research and remediation.
“When we made the decision to end operations, our priority was finding the right home for the technology we built and, most importantly, the right path forward for our customers,” said Minimus co-founder and CEO Ben Bernstein. “Echo shares our belief that software should be secure by default, and has built the platform and engineering capabilities to take that vision even further.”
This acquisition follows Echo’s $35 million Series A funding in December, led by N47. Similar companies competing in the same market include Chainguard Inc., which also supplies hardened containerized images and repository scanning.
The open-source software ecosystem continues to suffer under the burden of complex dependencies and vulnerable containers. Black Duck Software Inc.’s 2026 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis report found that 87% of audited commercial codebases contained at least one open-source vulnerability, with an average of 581 vulnerabilities per codebase. The report also noted that 65% of surveyed organizations reported a software supply-chain attack in the preceding year, including attacks involving dependency confusion and hijacked packages.
By providing continuously updated, hardened containers, packages, and libraries, Echo reduces exposure to known-vulnerable and unvetted components. Compromises are costly. According to IBM Corp.’s Cost of Data Breach Report 2026, the global average cost of a data breach hit $4.99 million this year, led by a 56% increase in AI-driven attacks.
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