Mar 21, 2023

Got it! Got it! Getty Images Robert Downey Jr. might be best known as Hollywood’s eccentric tech billionaire Tony Stark turned iconic Marvel Avengers superhero Iron Man. But off-screen he is a prolific investor who has backed dozens of AI-powered startups through his investment firms, Downey Ventures and FootPrint Coalition Ventures. So when his Instagram got hacked in 2019, before recovery support existed, perhaps it was inevitable that one day he would be called upon to make the Internet a safer place. Last week at SXSW, Downey announced that he had partnered with Boston-based security firm Aura as a brand advocate, investor, strategist and member of its board of directors with the goal of raising awareness among consumers of how they can protect themselves and their families online. During an interview, which was partly done through voice memos as only Iron Man could pull off, Downey told me he sees cybersecurity threats as an emerging crisis: “You get hacked, you get your identity stolen, the amount of time and literally energy processing your way back to a secure online reality in aggregate is astounding.” In joining Aura, he said his top priority will be getting educated. Jeffrey Katzenberg, former head of Paramount Pictures, Disney and Dreamworks, introduced Downey to Aura. Katzenberg, an early investor through his venture firm, WndrCo, serves on the board, and his partner Sujay Jaswa is the Chair. MORE FOR YOU “I’ve known Robert for decades,” Katzenberg told me on a call. The two media stars are also investors in the security startup, 1Password. He went on to explain how all roads led them to Aura. Katzenberg said that about four to five years ago, Jaswa started looking at the growing number of consumer touchpoints that were vulnerable to scammers and started consolidating companies that were tackling different verticals into a single app. That’s when they met Hari Ravichandran who was on the same path in his role as founder and CEO of Aura, a Boston-based company founded in 2017. They joined forces and by October 2021, the Series F startup was reporting it had millions of customers generating more than $220 million in annual revenue . Its valuation had topped $2.5 billion with a total raise of $650 million from General Catalyst, WndrCo, Warburg Pincus, Accel, TenEleven Ventures and Madrone Capital Partners. And WndrCo was its largest investor, said Katzenberg. Today, Aura is an all-in-one tool that offers antivirus software, password management, fraud alerts, private browsing, encrypted VPN communication and other security services. The platform is powered by AI to provide a firewall that dynamically detects and blocks unsafe domains, scans data broker sites for personal information and helps parents analyze voice and text conversations for cyberbullying across hundreds of games, thanks to the recent addition of Kidas machine learning software. On the roadmap are new features like auto-changing passwords. Competitors include Gen (Norton 360, LifeLock, Avast), Bitdefender, McAfee and others. For the past two years, Aura has been focused on selling through enterprise, said Katzenberg. In February 2022, MetLife became an exclusive distributor of Aura’s digital security solutions as part of its U.S. Group Benefits platform which reaches over 50,000 employers and 55 million eligible employees and their families — and the insurer was given a board observer seat, Ravichandran said. With the product now ready to scale as a direct-to-consumer brand, according to Katzenberg and Ravichandran, enter Robert Downey Jr. to make it a household name with his 55.1 million Instagram followers, 17.9 million Twitter followers and 40 million Facebook followers on Facebook. Downey says he expects to do a few commercials as well. Downey’s in it for the long term having signed the partnership deal for 10 years, the company confirmed. “I believe the company will have an amazing trajectory and I'm thrilled to be part of it,” he said. With the business US-based for now and the IPO horizon at least two years out, there’s a lot of room to grow, said Ravichandran. Follow me on  Twitter .