San Jose-based threat detection and response company Vectra AI raised $130m in a funding round that valued the company at $1.2bn.
The round, which brought total funding raised to date to more than $350m, was led by funds managed by Blackstone Growth with participation from existing investors including Accel, TCV Partners, Khosla Ventures, IA Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, DAG Ventures, Wipro Ventures, Atlantic Bridge and The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth through platform innovation and expansion into new markets and geographies.
Vectra claims to have witnessed a 100% compound annual growth rate in 2020 and counts Texas A&M University and Tribune Media Group among its customer base. In February, the company closed the strongest quarter in its history, it said.
It’s easy to see the firm’s upward trajectory as the security automation and response segment is expected to reach $1.68bn in value this year, according to Markets and Markets. This sudden surge is driven by a rise in security breaches and incidents and the rapid deployment and development of cloud-based solutions. In fact, 68% of business leaders in an Accenture survey said their cybersecurity risks are increasing.
Founded by Hitesh Sheth in 2012, Vectra’s AI-driven cloud security platform dubbed Cognito provides threat detection and response. It works with an enterprise’s IT infrastructure to continuously deploy advanced AI, threat intelligence feeds and known attack profiles to identify breaches as they are being executed as well as automates cyberattack mitigation. The threat detection models at Vectra are trained by supervised machine learning techniques which facilitates the identification of attacks. Vectra’s data scientists build and tune self-learning AI systems that complement the metadata with key security information.
Commenting on the importance of security infrastructure, Sheth said, “Over the past year, we have witnessed a continuous series of the most impactful and widespread cyberattacks in history. To protect their employees and digital assets, our customers require security solutions that are smarter than today’s adversaries and provide coverage for cloud, data centres and SaaS applications.
“As we look to the future, Blackstone’s global presence, operational resources, and in-house technology expertise will help us achieve our mission to become one of the dominant cybersecurity companies in the world.”
This funding comes at a time when investors seem to be pumping in millions of dollars at security companies, catapulting many into unicorn clubs. Just this week, Sysdig bagged a $188m Series F, which pushed its valuation to $1.19bn.
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