The almost four-year-old cybersecurity company Cylance has completed the initial closing of a $100 million Series D funding round led by fund managed by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities and Insight Venture Partners with follow-on investments by the company’s existing investors, the company said Wednesday.
Blackstone Tactical Opportunities and Insight Venture Partners are international investment and venture capital firms.
The company said it will use this funding to support Cylance’s business growth by expanding sales, marketing, and engineering programs for Cylance endpoint protection go-to-market strategies. Cylance highlighted its growth since introduction with product billings growth of 1,089 percent and customer growth of 785 percent.
The company’s premier endpoint security product is CylancePROTECT, which is able to identify and prevent zero-day and other forms of advanced and targeted cyberattacks impacting business and government agencies. This eliminates the need for individual security teams to analyze and develop expertise in defending against each new cyberattack, the company said. The product is currently being used by over 1,000 customers and millions of endpoints, Cylance said.
“We’re enthusiastic about supporting the terrific management team at Cylance, a company well-positioned for growth with a strong foundation in the cyber-security space. Cylance’s strong track record, including at Blackstone portfolio companies, deepens our conviction in the value that this platform can offer across sectors,” Viral Patel, a managing director at Blackstone Tactical Opportunities, said in a statement.
“We have been tracking Cylance since they came to market, and are thrilled to be partnering with them. Cylance’s team and technology have delivered on exactly what they’ve promised: elegant and effective prevention at the endpoint, in addition to impressive customers and growth,” Mike Triplett, managing director at Insight Venture Partners, added.
Cylance touts its success as the first company to apply artificial intelligence algorithms to predictively identify and stop malware and advanced threats.
“Our goal of reinventing endpoint security by using machine learning to think like a cyber hacker has been achieved and we now must ensure that it is put in the hands of security leaders inside enterprises, organizations, governments and small businesses as quickly as possible,” Cylance CEO Stuart McClure, said in a statement.