Darktrace, a cybersecurity startup that leverages machine learning and mathematics to detect threats, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $75 million in a Series D financing round which values the company at $825 million.
Founded in 2013 by senior members of the UK’s GCHQ and other intelligence agencies, Darktrace has raised more than $175 million in total funding to-date, including $18 million in March 2015, $22.5 million in July 2015, and $65 Million in July 2016.
“Darktrace has experienced phenomenal growth in sales – tripling bookings in the US and achieving a total contract value of $200M,” Darktrace CEO Nicole Egan told SecurityWeek. “After the close of our Series D funding round, Darktrace is now valued at $825M, demonstrating yet again the rippling effect our fundamental technology has made in the market.”
With dual headquarters in Cambridge, UK and San Francisco, California, the company offers a threat detection platform based on the “biological principles” of the human immune system. The solution is offered as a physical or virtual appliance which creates a “pattern of life” for networks, devices and users to help determine what is normal in an enterprise.
By detecting anomalies, Darktrace claims that its platform can identify threats lurking in networks in real time, including insider attacks, ransomware, machine-based attacks, and other unknown threats.
The company has doubled its employee headcount over the past 12 months to more than 500 worldwide, and currently has more than 3,000 customer deployments.
In early 2016, Darktrace extended its threat detection technology to virtualized environments, including third-party cloud environments such as Amazon Web Services, Google’s Cloud Platform, Rackspace and Microsoft Azure.
In addition to offering an enterprise IT security solution, the company offers a solution designed to detect threats within Industrial Control Systems (ICS) environments. The company has explained that its “Industrial Immune System” leverages Darktrace’s machine learning and mathematics in both operational technology (OT) and corporate environments to detect advanced cyberattacks and “subtle” insider threats targeting Industrial Control Systems, including SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) devices.
The Series D round was led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Summit Partners, KKR and TenEleven Ventures.