Cylance, a cybersecurity company leveraging AI and machine learning to provide threat prevention, has raised $120m in funding.
The round was led by funds managed by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities and included other unnamed investors. Prior to now, Cylance had raised around $177m, including a $100m tranche two years ago.
“Blackstone was an early believer in Cylance’s approach of applying AI to prevent one of the most difficult issues businesses face today – cyberattacks that disrupt operations and damage reputations,” said Viral Patel, senior managing director in Blackstone’s Tactical Opportunities group.
With an additional $120m in the bank the company plans to bolster its sales, marketing and development efforts, further expand its global footprint across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific, and extend its breadth of product offerings.
Founded in 2012, Cylance is an endpoint protection platform designed to thwart malware, ransomware, and other forms of advanced threats using AI. Since inception, the company claims its machine learning-based approach has prevented attacks on average 25 months before the attack was launched and first discovered. To date, the business has prevented over 23 million attacks worldwide, including more than four million previously unidentified attacks.
“Cylance has proven that artificial intelligence can defend against cybersecurity problems that were previously thought impossible to prevent,” stated Cylance CEO, Stuart McClure. “With the most advanced application of AI in endpoint security, Cylance products continuously learn and improve over time, enabling customers to achieve a state of ‘Perpetual Prevention’ and creating a simple silence on the endpoint.”
The company has in excess of 4,000 customers, and has revenues of $130m for the 2018 fiscal year, representing a year-on-year growth of 90 percent according to Brian Robins, chief financial officer at Cylance.
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