Malwarebytes Raises $50 Million from Fidelity

Malwarebytes, a maker of malware prevention and remediation software, today announced that it has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round from Fidelity Management and Research Company.

Founded in 2008 by Marcin Kleczynski, a Chicago teenager who was determined to clean malware off his mother’s computer that he used for gaming, the company was bootstrapped until raising a $30 million Series A funding round in July 2014, led by Highland Capital Partners.

The company says its software was installed on 250 million systems worldwide in 2015, though it did not say how many active, paying customers it has. The company claimed annualized billings exceeded $100 million in 2015.

According to Kleczynski, the new funding will be used to hire more engineers and accelerate the company’s sales, marketing and product development initiatives in its growing enterprise business.

While the company is a player in the increasingly competitive endpoint security market, it prides itself on its anti-exploit technology that helps protect against malicious threats that escape detection by many traditional antivirus solutions.

Headquartered in California, with additional offices in Estonia and Ireland, the company had total over 300 people by end 2015, including a global team of researchers.

Kleczynski, now 25, has been named to the 2015 Forbes 30 Under 30 Rising Stars of Enterprise Technology list and was 2014 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.