Just last month, AI-powered data security startup Cyera closed a $300 million Series D led by Accel and Sapphire Ventures. The deal gives Cyera the largest round of funding for a startup operating at the intersection of two of venture capitalists’ favorite industries: AI and cybersecurity.
What other deals were the largest in the same space as Cyera’s Series D? Cyera’s Series C was also $300 million in April.
Cyera’s two rounds may be the largest, but they’re not the only AI-powered cybersecurity startup to raise significant funding.
So far this year, venture capital-backed AI cybersecurity startups have raised more than $2.6 billion, according to data from Crunchbase. This is nearly triple the $900 million-plus these startups raised in a similar number of deals last year.
This amount is a significant increase since the fourth quarter of last year, when AI cybersecurity startups raised just $121 million in funding across 28 deals.
Rise of AI
Many venture capitalists in the cyber space have preached patience in determining how AI can best be leveraged in the industry, but their willingness to open their checkbooks tells a different story. It seems to be telling the story.
Investors can explore the potential for startups to use AI to secure the digital world, including in areas such as data protection, identity, and third-party risk, or to secure the development of large-scale language models themselves. He seems to be interested in sex.
The various uses of AI in cyber are evident when looking at some of the subsector’s biggest revenues.
For example, Cyera has an AI-powered data security platform that helps enterprise security teams understand their data, how it is used, and how to protect it across complex digital environments. Of course, as companies advance their AI efforts, their reliance on data will increase. Cyera also uses AI on its platform to assess the risk that a company’s data represents in terms of security, privacy, and regulatory compliance.
San Francisco-based Abnormal Security secured a $250 million Series D led by Wellington Management in August, valuing the cybersecurity startup at $5.1 billion. Abnormal uses machine learning and AI to understand human behavior, thwart attacks, and find compromised accounts across email and connected applications.
Another big round came just last month when anti-ransomware company Halcyon announced a $100 million Series C, valuing the company at $1 billion. Austin, Texas-based Halcyon has developed a platform that uses ransomware-trained AI and machine learning to reverse the effects of ransomware attacks. This can help ensure that your company’s operations are actually unaffected by attacks.
Its Series C was led by Evolution Equity Partners, a prolific investor in the AI cyberspace who also led large rounds for Torq and Protect AI.
AI helps you secure cash
Funding for AI is a big exception to the somewhat sluggish venture capital market, and like other sectors such as healthcare and defense, cyber also shows that investor interest in artificial intelligence has surpassed that of several other industries. shows how it helps improve funding prospects.
The introduction of AI into cybersecurity is not surprising given that cybersecurity has always been open to early adoption of emerging technologies. In the past, cybersecurity has quickly added automation and machine learning technology, perhaps as a means to address the industry’s labor shortage.
The same thing may be happening with AI, even as investors have become increasingly skeptical of startups’ AI claims and how to monetize them.
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Illustration: LeeAnne Diaz
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