Cybersecurity unicorns are being minted at a faster rate than ever before, and $1B+ valuations are coming through even larger funding rounds.
Private companies are stepping up, backed by millions of dollars of funding, to help tackle today’s mounting cybersecurity challenges.
In tandem, investors are betting on cybersecurity startups across more deals than ever before.
In fact, 2018 saw 617 deals go to private cybersecurity companies — a nearly 40% increase in deals compared to 2015.
This year, 4 cybersecurity companies have joined the global unicorn club. We see the creation of private cybersecurity unicorns at a faster rate than ever before, through even larger funding rounds.
We used the CB Insights database to surface the 13 private cybersecurity companies that are currently valued at $1B+.
Tanium is the most valuable privately owned cybersecurity company. The company was last valued at ~$6.5B when it raised a $200M Series H round in October 2018.
Most recently, KnowBe4 raised a $300M Series D round in June 2019 and obtained a valuation of $1B.
Below, we profile each of the thirteen cybersecurity startups currently valued at $1B+. Companies are ordered by their current valuation.
The global cybersecurity unicorn club
1. Tanium
Headquarters: California, United States
Total disclosed funding: $770.3M
Date joined unicorn club: 3/31/2015
Current valuation: $6.6B
Select investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford & Co., TPG Growth
Tanium offers a platform for endpoint management and security, allowing its customers to secure all connected devices in their enterprise.
2. Qi An Xin
Headquarters: Beijing, China
Total disclosed funding: $864.3M
Date joined unicorn club: 11/29/2018
Current valuation: $2.5B
Select investors: AlphaX Partners, China Electronics, Qihoo 360 Technology
Qi An Xin provides big data, content, endpoint, and perimeter security for customers in government, enterprise, and more. Its product hopes to integrate threat intelligence and IT to help customers secure their networks.
3. Cloudflare
Headquarters: California, United States
Total disclosed funding: $332.1M
Date joined unicorn club: 9/22/2015
Current valuation: $1.8B
Select investors: Baidu, capitalG, Union Square Ventures
Cloudflare is working to speed up and protect properties online, from websites to SaaS services. By sending its customers’ web traffic through its own global network, Cloudflare can optimize its performance and page load time, while providing protection against a variety of cyber attacks.
4. Kaseya
Headquarters: New York, United States
Total disclosed funding: $550M
Date joined unicorn club: 3/27/2019
Current valuation: $1.8B
Select investors: Insight Partners, TPG Alternative & Renewable Technologies
Kaseya allows customers to manage, secure, and backup IT. Its platform is geared toward service providers and IT teams, and provides monitoring, management, security, and continuity.
5. Darktrace
Headquarters: England, United Kingdom
Total disclosed funding: $232.3M
Date joined unicorn club: 5/15/2018
Current valuation: $1.7B
Select investors: Insight Partners, SoftBank Group, Samsung Ventures
Darktrace is working to manage risk from cyber attacks by using AI to detect abnormal behavior in organizations. The company can help enterprise customers secure their infrastructures when bad actors have already breached the network.
6. Lookout
Headquarters: California, United States
Total disclosed funding: $281M
Date joined unicorn club: 8/13/2014
Current valuation: $1.3B
Select investors: Greylock Partners, In-Q-Tel, Qualcomm Ventures
Lookout helps its customers secure mobile devices against app, device, and network-level threats. Lookout can help protect users from viruses, can backup and restore data, and locate lost or stolen phones.
7. 4Paradigm
Headquarters: Beijing, China
Total disclosed funding: $145M
Date joined unicorn club: 12/19/2018
Current valuation: $1.2B
Select investors: Bank of China, Sequoia Capital China
4Paradigm allows enterprises to detect fraud, improve efficiency, reduce risk, and market to customers. The platform uses AI to analyze online customer habits, and is mainly marketed toward financial services firms.
8. Illumio
Headquarters: California, United States
Total disclosed funding: $332.2M
Date joined unicorn club: 6/7/2017
Current valuation: $1B
Select investors: Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, BlackRock
Illumio helps organizations overcome data center and cloud security challenges by preventing the spread of cyber threats with micro-segmentation, real-time application dependency mapping, and more.
Headquarters: Zhejiang, China
Total disclosed funding: $236.4M
Date joined unicorn club: 10/10/2017
Current valuation: $1B
Select investors: IDG Capital, GGV Capital, Tiantu Capital
Tongdun Technology provides anti-theft and anti-fraud risk control services to clients in industries such as financial services. By using big data, AI, and cloud computing, Tongdun hopes to establish an intelligent anti-fraud decision-making platform.
10. Netskope
Headquarters: California, United States
Total disclosed funding: $400.1M
Date joined unicorn club: 11/13/2018
Current valuation: $1B
Select investors: Accel, ICONIQ Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners
Netskope offers a platform for companies to protect against threats to data in cloud applications and cloud infrastructure, allowing IT to direct usage, protect sensitive data, and ensure compliance in real-time, on any device.
11. Auth0
Headquarters: Washington, United States
Total disclosed funding: $212.2M
Date joined unicorn club: 5/20/2019
Current valuation: $1B
Select investors: Bessemer Venture Partners, Telstra Ventures, K9 Ventures
Auth0 offers a secure login system for companies to authenticate the identity of employees for web, mobile, IoT, and internal applications.
12. KnowBe4
Headquarters: Florida, United States
Total disclosed funding: $393.2M
Date joined unicorn club: 6/12/2019
Current valuation: $1B
Select investors: Elephant Venture Capital, Goldman Sachs, KKR
KnowBe4 is helping companies manage the problem of social engineering tactics by training users to recognize red flags via tools that enable IT to send simulated phishing emails to users.
13. Druva
Headquarters: California, United States
Total disclosed funding: $328M
Date joined unicorn club: 6/20/2019
Current valuation: $1B
Select investors: Dell Technologies Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Sequoia
Druva is a SaaS company that delivers cloud data management and protection built on AWS. Its technology allows customers to reduce the costs associated with cloud data handling, while allowing proper access of data through cloud-based disaster recovery, secure enterprise mobility, and more.