Israeli startup Cybereason gets $100M series D funding

The firm, founded by veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces cyberwar force Unit 8200, has raised $100 million series D money from its partner, customer and existing funder, the Japanese tech-finance giant SoftBank Corp.

Cybereason, the next-generation cybersecurity firm founded by veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces cyberwar force Unit 8200, has raised $100 million series D money from its partner, customer and existing funder, the Japanese tech-finance giant SoftBank Corp.

The new round more than doubles the amount the the company raised in its series A, B and C rounds, which brought in a combined total just under $90 million from funders Lockheed Martin, SoftBank Corp., and venture capital outfits CRV and Spark Capital. Last year it moved its global headquarters to Boston from Tel Aviv, though it still has a base in the Israeli city. It also has a presence in London and a joint venture with SoftBank in Tokyo.

“This new funding allows us to increase our growth through new distribution channels and to develop new technologies,” said Lior Div, Cybereason co-founder and CEO in a statement.

A company executive enlarged on that, telling CyberScoop the expansion would enable big investments in the product portfolio, both enhancing existing technologies and developing new ones, and in headcount.

“We are hiring very aggressively” with up to 100 openings worldwide, the executive said. The new products would broaden the protection the company could offer from traditional IT endpoints like PCs, to “the protection of everything” — smartphones, IoT devices, servers, switches, and “anything with processing power.”

“We offer nextgen anti-virus, because you have to, all the big customers in finance and healthcare and the other sectors want it … But we see that as basically antiquated technology that won’t be around in 10 years,” said the executive.

The executive said the company’s selling point was its machine learning technology which “automates the entire [security] process.”

“We keep our customers out of the headlines,” the executive added.

The new round would also enable more international expansion, the executive said, in the Americas and Europe but also in Africa. In east Asia, the the company would leverage its increasingly close relationship with SoftBank to push deeper into the market.

“Our strengthened partnership with SoftBank, which has a formidable sales force and enterprise customer base in Japan and a global reach, will also enable us to further expand our presence in the cybersecurity market,” said Dior.

“We want to become an iconic global brand,” said the executive, “We can replace the big anti-virus vendors.”

Last year, the company said in a job posting, its revenue more than doubled, it built an on-premise security operations center and it moved into a new state-of-the-art global headquarters in Boston’s Hancock Tower. The company also more than quadrupled its headcount to 230. It currently says it has 300 employees.

Last week, Cybereason was selected by the Wall Street Journal as one of 25 top tech companies to watch.

Watch CyberScoop TV’s interview with Cybereason CTO Israel Barak at RSA:

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