Perplexity Raises $62.7 mm, Doubles Valuation
Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine going up against Google has raised approximately $62.7 million in a recent funding round. The round, which doubles the company’s valuation from three months ago to over $1 billion, was led by investor Daniel Gross and included participation from billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, and Figma Inc. CEO Dylan Field. Previous investors Jeff Bezos and Nvidia Corp., also contributed to the round.
The company has a lot of buzz and is growing rapidly. Since its founding less than two years ago, Perplexity has processed more user queries in the US in the first half of 2024 than it did in all of 2023. Its emphasis on accuracy has differentiated its offering against competitors, attracting notable users like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Perplexity offers both free and paid versions of its service and is generating $20 million in annual recurring revenue.
The funding announcement was made in conjunction with the launch of an Enterprise-focused offering called Perplexity Enterprise Pro. The enterprise version is priced at $40 a month or $400 a year and came with an endorsement from Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi.
Meanwhile, TechCrunch is reportingthe company may in fact be in talks to raise as much as $250 mm at a $2.5 – 3 bn valuation. Here’s a choice sentence from the TechCrunch article –
In January, the company raised nearly $74 million at a valuation of $540 million (up from $121 million in April 2023). And at the beginning of March, the company closed funding on a valuation of $1 billion, with CEO Aravind Srinivas clarifying on Twitter today that the amount raised was roughly $63 million.
Cyera Raises $300 mm
Cyera, a startup specializing in data security solutions powered by AI, has raised $300 million in Series C funding, bringing its total funding to $460 million and valuing the company at $1.4 billion. The investment, led by Coatue, with participation from Spark Capital, Georgian, AT&T Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Accel, Redpoint, and Cyberstarts, comes against broad investor interest in cloud and data security platform Rubrik‘s upcoming IPO. Bloomberg is reporting Rubrik’s offering is massively oversubscribed.
Cyera’s platform focuses on Data Security Posture Management (DSPM). It addresses the need for organizations to secure their data against cyber threats and bring it in compliance with increasingly complex regulatory requirements. By providing comprehensive data security capabilities, including data discovery and classification, enterprise-wide coverage across various environments, and automated remediation, Cyera aims to empower enterprises to safeguard their most data.
With a team of 200 professionals, Cyera has achieved significant milestones, including recognition by Fast Company as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2024 and inclusion in Fortune magazine’s inaugural Fortune 60 list of top cybersecurity companies.
Cyera competitor BigID raised $60 mm led by Riverwood Capitalin March, 2024, bringing its total capital raised to $320 mm. BigID claims to have ~$100 mm in recurring revenue.
Anvilogic Raises $45 mm in Series C
Anvilogic, a multi-data platform SIEM provider, has secured $45 mm in a Series C funding round led by Evolution Equity Partners. This latest funding brings Anvilogic’s total funding to $85 mm since its founding in 2019. The round includes participation from existing investors Foundation Capital, Cervin, Myriad, Point72, Outpost and G Squared.
By empowering security teams t, Anvilogic aims to address critical challenges faced by enterprise Security Operations Centers (SOCs) to effectively detect, hunt, and investigate threats across diverse data platforms. Through its multi-data platform approach, Anvilogic enables the integration of scalable data lakes into existing security architectures, offering a cost-effective solution without disrupting established processes.
Nagomi Security Raises $23 mm
Nagomi Security, a cybersecurity startup specializing in proactive threat exposure management, has closed a $23 million Series A funding round. This investment comes on the heels of a previously undisclosed $7 million Seed round, bringing Nagomi’s total funding to $30 million. The round was led by TCV, with participation from Team8 (who also led the Seed round), CrowdStrike Falcon Fund, and Okta Ventures.
Founded in 2023, Nagomi emerged from stealth mode just six months later with a flagship platform that has garnered over $1 million in ARR. The company is led by a team of cybersecurity veterans with experience at Claroty, Snyk, and Demisto.
Nagomi’s Proactive Defense Platform aims to address a critical cybersecurity challenge: maximizing the effectiveness of existing security tools against evolving threats. The platform prioritizes the most pressing risks based on an organization’s unique threat profile and provides actionable remediation plans to minimize exposure using existing security investments.
This funding round will fuel Nagomi’s growth plans, including expanding its team with key hires. Morgan Gerlak from TCV joins Nagomi’s board of directors alongside the company’s founders and Team8leadership.
Sublime Security Raises $20 mm Series A
Email security startup Sublime Security announced it has raised $20 mm in a Series A round led by Index Ventures with participation from Decibel Partners and Slow Ventures and CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch
Sublime provides an open email security platform that allows users to write, run and share security rules in its Message Query Language (MQL). MQL allows operators to write custom rules protecting against email attacks, modify those written and shared by the community and clearly understand why messages are flagged as being problematic.
Sublime was founded by Joshua Kamdjou and Ian Thiel.
Vorlon Raises $15.7 mm in Series A
Vorlon, a platform focusing on comprehensive third-party API security, has closed a Series A funding round led by Accel, totaling $15.7 million in capital. This sum includes undisclosed funding from a previous Seed round led by Accel less than two years ago. Shield Capital participated in the Series A. Other investors include Demisto co-founders Slavik Markovich, Rishi Bhargava, Dan Sarel, and Guy Rinat, former Chief Data Scientist of the U.S. D. J. Patil, former CEO of Exabeam Nir Polak, and CTO of Fox Corporation Paul Cheesborough.
Vorlon‘s platform utilizes AI-driven detection, threat intelligence, and remediation capabilities to help organizations manage their third-party API attack surface. Founded by CEO Amir Khayat and CTO Amichay Spivak, both formerly of Demisto and Palo Alto Networks, Vorlon aims to bridge the gap in third-party API security.
Prophet Security Launches With $11 mm in Seed Funding
Former StackRox (Acquired by Red Hat) CEO Kamal Shah announced the launch of his AI-powered security operations startup Prophet Security with $11 mm in seed funding led by Bain Capital Ventures. Kamal has partnered up with Vibhav Sreekanti as CTO.
Prophet is being pitched as a co-pilot for security operations. It seeks to streamline the handling of security alerts by aggregating data from various security tools, normalizing it, and feeding it into an autonomous investigation planning engine. This engine generates actionable plans, executed by machine learning models, to prioritize and respond to alerts effectively. Through a recursive process, the tool refines its actions based on new insights uncovered during investigation.
Simbian Launches With $10 mm in Seed Funding
Simbian, a startup building generative AI copilots for cybersecurity teams, announced the successful closure of a $10 million seed funding round to launch its platform. The round was led by Cota Capital, Icon Ventures, Firebolt, and Rain Capital, alongside notable angels including Datadog‘s Olivier Pomel and Meta‘s former CSO Joe Sullivan.
With its debut copilot tool, Simbian aims to integrate intelligent AI systems into diverse IT environments to efficiently identify and resolve threats. By leveraging generative AI, the copilot adapts to various security functions and addresses unique concerns tailored to each enterprise’s IT landscape. Users can interact with the copilot using natural language, receiving personalized recommendations and automated actions to enhance security outcomes while reducing costs.
Simbian is founded by Fortanix co-founder Ambuj Kumar and Alankrit Chona.
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