Sanjay Jeyakumar and Evan Reiser, co-founders of Abnormal Security
Security exception
Cybersecurity company Abnormal Security said on Tuesday it had raised $250 million in Series D funding, valuing the company at $5.1 billion.
Abnormal’s latest funding round was led by Wellington Management, with participation from existing investors Greylock Partners, Menlo Ventures, Insight Partners and the venture capital arm of CrowdStrike.
Launched in 2018 by two software architects and the founders of TellApart, which was acquired by Twitter, Abnormal has doubled in size, with annual revenue exceeding $200 million last year. The cybersecurity software competitor has more than 2,400 customers, including Maersk, Xerox and Mattel, which together account for about 17% of Fortune 500 companies, according to the company.
“This funding allows us to further invest in our human behavioral AI platform to protect more people’s daily applications while enabling customers to solve problems through autonomous AI,” said co-founder and CEO Evan Reiser in a statement. plan to accelerate their artificial intelligence plans.
Abnormal focuses on the threat of advanced email attacks, one of the largest cybersecurity risk areas facing enterprises, including phishing attacks, malware, spam, and vendor fraud.
and Microsoft’s market capitalization exceeds US$20 billion In terms of network security revenue last year, competition among network security veterans Cloudflare, Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks intensified. The market is also consolidating. Abnormal’s two main competitors in the past few years were acquired by Check Point Software in August 2021 for approximately $280 million, and Area 1 Security, which was acquired by Cloudflare in February 2022 for approximately $162 million.
“Abnormal’s financial position is strong, ensuring our market position as one of the fastest-growing Internet companies ever,” Reiser told CNBC.
The company has also made several strategic hires that could lead to an initial public offering. Last year, Michael DeCesare, the former CEO of Exabeam and Forescout Technology, was named president to focus on cross-department marketing efforts.
Additionally, CrowdStrike veteran James Yeager was recently hired to head public sector sales, a growth target for the email security vendor. In March, Abnormal hired Chief Financial Officer Smita Sanadhya, a former senior executive at Microsoft Hong Kong and Hewlett-Packard and startup Okta, who helped scale the company into a $2 billion public company. Abnormal’s leadership is also joined by chief legal officer Jeff True, who led Zoom’s legal department during a period of hyper-growth during the pandemic.
The hiring spree spans the entire company, with up to 300 new positions set to be filled this year among the existing 600 employees.
“The IPO is another milestone in our journey to become a generation company, and the timing of going public will depend on when market conditions create favorable opportunities for us,” Reiser told CNBC.
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