10 Cool Tech Companies That Raised Funding In September 2022

Cybersecurity technology providers are most prominent among the companies who reported raising new financing in September, along with a leading cloud storage provider and developers of data transformation, IoT and Kubernetes application observability technologies.

Follow The Money

The availability of venture capital and other funding for IT startups and IT companies seeking financial resources to maintain growth continues to be tighter than it has been in recent years. Funding rounds also generally remain smaller than prior to this year with rounds of $100 million or more now a rarity.

But some IT companies continue to attract robust amounts of financing. In September Wasabi Technologies, a provider of cloud data storage services that’s challenging Amazon Web Services and other cloud giants, raised $250 million in financing – half in equity funding and half through a debt facility.

Companies developing next-generation cybersecurity technologies continue to attract funding. Four such companies, including established security company Malwarebytes and younger companies Cymulate, Fortanix and Dig Security, all reported successful funding rounds last month.

The September funding roundup also includes a startup provider of data transformation technology, an industrial IoT platform developer, and two startups developing Kubernetes application observability technologies.

Here’s a look at 10 companies that raised funding in September 2022.

Wasabi Technologies

Headquarters: Boston

CEO: David Friend

Funding: The $250 million in new financing included $125 million in Series D funding and a $125 million increase in the company’s debt facility.

Investors: The Series D round was led by L2 Point Management with participation from Cedar Pine, an affiliate of Cerberus Capital Management, and returning investors including Fidelity Management & Research Company and Forestay Capital. The debt facility is with MGG Investment Group.

What company does: Wasabi is a leading provider of cloud data storage.

CEO Quote: “The emphasis right now is on top line growth. And as long as we’re expanding into all these new markets and building all these data centers and everything else, that’s a cash drain. But the minute you slow the growth down, you can turn profitable. So we’re at that point now where, if we didn’t have access to more investment capital, we would just slow down the growth and we can survive indefinitely.”

Malwarebytes

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

CEO: Marcin Kleczynski

Funding: A $100 million strategic minority investment expected to close by the end of 2022.

Investors: Vector Capital

What company does: Malwarebytes provides cybersecurity protection for consumers and organizations.

CEO Quote: “Vector Capital’s investment is a testament to the transformational work our team has done to evolve our best-in-class endpoint protection to comprehensive offerings for both individuals and organizations, while driving profitable growth. Importantly, Vector Capital shares our mission to protect those most vulnerable to cyberattacks through cutting-edge technologies and the power of community. We believe Vector Capital’s collaborative approach and proven ability to help build global software businesses make them ideal partners in our ongoing efforts to build a safer digital world.”

Fortanix

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

CEO: Ambuj Kumar

Funding: A $90 million Series C funding round that brings the company’s total funding to $122 million.

Investors: The round was led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management with participation from GiantLeap Capital and previous investors Foundation Capital, Intel Capital, Neotribe Ventures and the CIA’s In-Q-Tel venture investment arm.

What company does: Fortanix develops technology to secure data wherever it resides.

CEO Quote: “Cybersecurity is one of the most important needs of our current era. This fundraise is a strong validation of the massive market opportunity ahead as we execute our bold mission.”

Cymulate

Headquarters: New York and Tel Aviv

CEO: Eyal Wachsman

Funding: The Series D funding round raised $70 million bringing the company’s total funding to $141 million.

Investors: The round was led by existing investor One Peak together with previous investors Susquehanna Growth Equity, Vertex Ventures Israel, Vertex Growth and Dell Technologies Capital.

What company does: Cymulate develops an extended security posture management platform.

CEO Quote: “In a market where every business must be prepared to fight advanced threats, I am proud of our team’s ability to innovate and respond quickly to the constant turbulence of cybersecurity. Our funding from existing investors is a further testament to their confidence in our company, direction, and continued vision. We look forward to reaching our next innovation milestones and expanding into new markets across the globe.”

Isovalent

Headquarters: Cupertino, Calif.

CEO: Dan Wendlandt

Funding: The $40 million Series B funding round brought Isovalent’s total financing to $69 million.

Investors: The round was led by Thomvest Ventures with participation from M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund) and Grafana Labs who joined Google and Cisco Systems as existing strategic investors. Additional investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Mango Capital and Mirae Asset Capital.

What company does: Isovalent develops Isovalent Cilium Enterprise, an open-source, eBPF-based, cloud-native networking, security and observability system for Kubernetes applications.

CEO Quote: “The fact that Microsoft is investing in Isovalent means that all three top cloud providers have Kubernetes managed services. Google and Amazon already default to Cilium. While we’re not announcing Microsoft integration, you can see that Microsoft will work with us on Cilium to make sure it connects in an efficient and easy to use way.”

Dig Security

Headquarters: Tel Aviv

CEO: Dan Benjamin

Funding: A $34 million Series A funding round that brought the company’s total financing to $45 million.

Investors: The round was led by SignalFire with participation from Felicis, Okta Ventures, Nir Polak (venture partner at SignalFire and founder and chairman of Exabeam), Jack Huffard (co-founder of Tenable and existing investor), and existing investor Team8.

What company does: Dig Security develops software that organizations use to discover, classify, protect and govern cloud data.

CEO Quote: “The global shift to the cloud has thrust unprecedented volumes of data into potentially risky data stores. As a result, we‘ve seen a sharp increase in cloud-based data breaches and rapidly growing demand for near-real-time protection. Nowadays, a motivated attacker can breach cloud data in less than three minutes. Existing solutions like Cloud Security Posture Management only scan the environment every 24 hours, leaving the window open for another 480 attacks until the next scan. This latest investment is a validation of our approach and allows us to continue to make cloud data inherently more secure.”

Litmus

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

CEO: Vatsal Shah

Funding: The $30 million Series B funding round brings the company’s total financing to $42.6 million.

Investors: The funding round was led by Belden with participation from additional investors.

What company does: Litmus develops Litmus Edge, an industrial IoT edge platform.

CEO Quote: “We’ve always been a product-led company and this investment proves that the product we’ve developed is leading the market in solving OT [operational technology] complexity to capture the data needed to power advanced Industry 4.0 use cases. Our investors are validating both our business model and our technology by coupling it with their offerings to help customers digitally transform, increase efficiency and improve their bottom line.”

Coalesce

Headquarters: San Francisco

CEO: Armon Petrossian

Funding: The $26 million Series A funding round follows the company’s $5.92 million seed funding round in January.

Investors: The funding round was led by Emergence Capital with participation from seed investors 11.2 Capital, GreatPoint Ventures and Industry Ventures.

What company does: Coalesce markets a data transformation automation platform that is built for large-scale data transformation workloads.

CEO Quote: “Data experts and data are the cornerstones of every insight. To make data valuable, it must be transformed in the right way, and adapt to change over time. We’re building a world-class organization to help data teams quickly model and transform data at scale. Along this journey, it was a priority for us to find the right investment partners that understand our vision. We’re excited to team up with Emergence Capital, they immediately recognized the value of our cloud data transformation platform and how it will revolutionize this industry.”

Groundcover

Headquarters: Tel Aviv

CEO: Shahar Azulay

Funding: The company announced $24.5 million in funding including a $4.5 million seed funding round and $20 million in Series A funding.

Investors: The A Series was led by Zeev Ventures, joined by previous investors Angular Ventures, Heavybit and Jive Ventures.

What company does: Groundcover develops a Kubernetes application monitoring system that incorporates open-source eBPF technology.

CEO Quote: “The APM [application performance management] space is thirsty for innovation and I am psyched to be introducing eBPF into this space. We are so confident that Groundcover redefines observability, that we‘ve taken the unconventional approach of offering a robust free tier from day one. Groundcover breaks the visibility-cost tradeoff, ensuring teams don’t have to compromise on visibility depth to manage budgets responsibly. We’ve made it our mission to allow them to get the most out of APM at a fraction of the existing cost in the market today.”

Mo Faisal, President and CEO of Movellus, will present at the Linley Fall Processor Conference 2021

Movellus

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

CEO: Mo Faisal

Funding: A $23 million Series B funding round.

Investors: MESH and SK hynix joined existing investors Accelerate Blue Fund, Candou Ventures, Hui Capital, Intel Capital, In-Q-Tel, Michigan Capital Network, Stata Ventures and other private investors in the round.

What company does: Movellus develops intelligent clock network technology used in semiconductor architectures for a range of applications from ultra-low power edge AI devices to high-performance cloud data center compute and AI systems.

CEO Quote: “We were able to close the round with a significant step up in valuation in a challenging economic environment, and SK hynix’s strategic investment is a strong endorsement in our technology and long-term strategy.”