Morning Report: Email security platform Agari raised $40 million Series E from Goldman Sachs and others.
Today Agari, a late-stage cybersecurity platform, raised a $40 million Series E led by Goldman Sachs. Other participants included Norwest Venture Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, First Round Capital, and Alloy Ventures. This round brings the companies’ aggregate funds raised to $88 million, according to its announcement.
Follow Crunchbase News on Twitter & Facebook
Founded in 2009, Agari is attempting to bring security to a ubiquitous, yet vulnerable service: email. While spam and other filters attempt to weed out obvious threats and unwanted mail from users’ inboxes, skilled scammers are still adept at exploiting inboxes for financial gain. The targets of these scams aren’t just random individual Gmail accounts, many scammers specifically target businesses.
Last week, the federal government busted 74 scammers based in Nigeria. According to Wired’s coverage of the event, the federal Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that BEC losses have totaled over $3.7 billion in recent years.
Agari’s enterprise product aims to address this massive problem by providing enterprises with “breach remediation.” Its corporate digital marketing product is meant to prevent threats to customers and brands brought on by fraudulent outbound emails. The company specifically assists companies in the financial services, healthcare, and government sectors, according to its website. The company plans to use its fresh funds to expand globally into Europe and Asia.
With concerns over customer and corporate data protection, Crunchbase News has covered multiple rounds for security startups. According to our research, at least 10 cybersecurity startups have raised $10 million or more in early-stage rounds just this year. It is clear that where threats to corporate and individual security exist, companies are prepared to use technology to address the problem, and VCs are eager to back them.
From The Crunchbase Daily:
PayPal caps M&A spree with Simility
- PayPal is on a buying spree. The payments provider just announced its fourth acquisition in about a month, snapping up Simility, a developer of anti-fraud technology, for $120 million. Other recent purchases include payment app Hyperwallet, retail analytics provider Jetlore and the biggest deal, Europe’s iZettle, for which it paid $2.2 billion.
- Elastic, a provider of enterprise data search software, has confidentially filed to go public at what is expected to be a multi-billion dollar valuation, according to media reports. The six-year-old company previously raised more than $100 million in venture funding.
Assistive tech sees funding spike
- Investors are backing more rounds and putting more capital to work in startups developing technologies and services to help disabled people. Efforts range from sign language translators to high performance wheelchairs to 3D-printed orthopedics.
Rebtel secures backing for migrant banking
- Rebtel, a Swedish startup that provides a technology platform for migrants, has secured $8 million to develop a digital banking product.
Illustration Credit: Li Anne Dias
Stay up to date with recent funding rounds, acquisitions, and more with the Crunchbase Daily.
67.1K Followers