Four Security Startups Raise Combined $112M In Rocky Market

Investors seem confident that demand for cybersecurity will remain solid even if there’s an economic downturn, says Greg Murphy, CEO of Ordr, which raised $40 million. ‘I feel strongly about the fundamentals,’ he tells CRN.

Amid concerns over the state of the economy and investment world, four cybersecurity companies have nevertheless managed to snag a combined $112 million in venture funding from an array of investors around the globe.

Leading the pack is Santa Clara, Calif.-based Ordr, which said Wednesday morning that it has raised just over $40 million in Series C funding, led by Battery Ventures and Ten Eleven Ventures. Ordr, a provider of connected device security, has now raised more than $90 million in funding since its founding in 2015.

Meanwhile, Seemplicity, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based security company, said this week that it has raised $32 million in funding, led by Glilot Capital Partners, bringing its total funding to $38 million since its founding in 2020.

In addition, Vade, an AI-based email security company based in San Francisco, has received $30 million in funding, led by Tikehau Ace Capital, with the French government also investing through French Tech Souveraineté.

A fourth security company, Surefire Cyber, an incident response company based in San Mateo, Calif., emerged from stealth with $10 million in Series A funding from Forgepoint Capital, which incubated Surefire until its official launch this week.

The funding comes amid growing anxiety around the U.S. and world about a possible economic downturn. In particular, Wall Street has pounded tech stocks in recent months, and shares of cybersecurity firms haven’t been spared the financial shellacking.

In a move that stunned the security industry in general, Lacework, a cloud security company based in San Jose, Calif., last week confirmed it was laying off an estimated 20 percent of its workforce—six months after it raised $1.3 billion in funding. In a company blog post, the co-CEOs of Lacework blamed a “seismic shift” in the markets for its head-count reduction move.

But Greg Murphy, CEO of Ordr, said many recently announced VC deals were actually negotiated months ago—before recent market gyrations.

He said investors seem confident that demand for cybersecurity will remain solid even if there’s an economic downturn. “I feel strongly about the fundamentals,” Murphy said.

As for Ordr’s recently raised funds, Murphy said the firm plans to spend the money on R&D, marketing and beefing up its channel team and partnerships.

Currently, about 85 percent to 90 percent of Ordr’s business is via the channel, and Murphy said Ordr is “very much focused” on increasing its channel sales.

Seemplicity, which provides a risk reduction and productivity platform for internal security teams, is taking a different approach in terms of how it plans to spend its recently raised $32 million.

Besides earmarking some of the money to R&D, Yoran Sirkis, co-founder and CEO of Seemplicity, said his company is committed for the time being to mostly direct sales.

He said direct sales will allow Seemplicity personnel to closely interact with customers and learn more about their needs in the early years of the company’s existence. But he said he sees the company eventually becoming more aggressive in channel sales as its product matures.

For Vade, officials made clear channel players are key to its future.

“We invested in Vade because we believe that managed service providers (MSPs) and managed security service providers (MSSPs) need to have technology that can easily and effectively neutralize the latest threats,” Francois Lavaste, executive director at Tikehau Ace Capital, said in a statement.

Executives at Surefire Cyber, which was founded by incident response expert Billy Gouveia, could not be reached for comment.