10 Cool Tech Companies That Raised Funding In March 2022

Next-generation technology companies in cybersecurity, container software and machine learning, along with providers of applications for financial planning and hiring software developers, reported new rounds of funding in March.

Follow The Money

Startups pushing technology boundaries in cybersecurity and container development and management were among the companies that attracted significant venture funding in March.

Topping this month’s list is Island, which markets a secure browser targeting bring-your-own-device users, contractors and other workers who need to access corporate data.

Container platforms are the focus of two companies on the list, Docker and Spectro Cloud, as are startups with machine learning, DevSecOps and unified cybersecurity offerings.

The following are our picks for 10 cool tech startups that landed new funding in March.

Island

Headquarters: Dallas

CEO: Mike Fey

Funding: The $115 million Series B funding round raised Island’s valuation to $1.3 billion.

Investors: The funding round was led by Insight Partners, which led the company’s previous financing round, with participation from existing investors Stripes and Sequoia Capital.

What the company does: Island develops a secure browser targeting bring-your-own-device users, contractors and other workers with their own mobile devices who need to access corporate data.

CEO Quote: “The expansion opportunity is to be the primary browser in the organization. And as we become the primary browser, all of a sudden our ability to displace the complexity in customer environments of a whole host of new and old technologies is high.”

Docker

Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.

CEO: Ben Golub

Funding: The Series C funding round raised $105 million.

Investors: The round was led by new investor Bain Capital Ventures and includes new investors Atlassian Ventures, Citi Ventures, Vertex Ventures and Four Rivers, as well as existing investors Benchmark, Insight Partners and Tribe Capital.

What the company does: Docker develops an open-source containerization platform that enables developers to build, package and ship containerized applications.

CEO Quote: “This funding milestone is a result of the efforts of the Docker team, our developer community and our partners. Together we have focused on the needs of developers to help them quickly and safely build, share and run any app, anywhere. As tens of millions of new developers join the market this decade, this funding enables us to go faster in solving problems for this next generation.”

Cowbell Cyber

Headquarters: Pleasanton, Calif.

CEO: Jack Kudale

Funding: A $100 million Series B funding round.

Investors: The funding round was led by Anthemis Group with participation from Permira Funds, PruVen Capital, NYCA Partners, Viola FinTech and all existing investors.

What the company does: Cowbell Cyber provides cyber insurance and threat monitoring services for small and midsize businesses.

CEO Quote: “Since its 2019 inception, Cowbell has delivered on its promise to meet the needs of our policyholders by aligning cyber coverage to their specific exposures, continuously monitoring their rapidly changing threat landscape, and offering access to unique risk mitigation resources. As we position ourselves to lead the ‘second wave’ of cyber insurance growth, this funding will accelerate our pioneering approach to cyber risk underwriting and drive growth and profitability while closing insurability gaps.”

HackerRank

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

CEO: Vivek Ravisankar

Funding: The $60 million in Series D funding brought HackerRank’s total funding to more than $115 million.

Investors: The round was led by Susquehanna Growth with participation by JMI, Khosla Ventures, Randstad Innovation Fund and Recruit Holdings.

What the company does: HackerRank markets a remote interview and technical assessment solution for hiring software developers.

CEO Quote: “It’s never been more critical to hire the right developer with the right skill set. For more than a decade, HackerRank has helped growing organizations hire for the most in-demand technical roles on the market. This funding will help us expand our leadership position and support the most relevant skills in tech—and expand beyond hiring into the post-hire journey, as well.”

DataRails

Headquarters: Tel Aviv, Israel

CEO: Didi Gurfinkel

Funding: The $50 million in Series B funding is DataRails’ third investment round in the past 12 months.

Investors: The round was led by Qumra Capital and included new investors La Maison Partners and ClalTech, as well as existing investors Zeev Ventures, Vertex Ventures Israel, Innovation Endeavors, Joey Low, Vintage Investment Partners, Oryzn Capital and Icon Venture.

What the company does: DataRails develops a financial planning and analysis platform for Excel users.

CEO Quote: “More than 80 percent of small and medium-sized businesses use Excel for financial planning and analysis and experience the pain of manual work, broken processes and scattered data. The need for real-time consolidation, collaboration and extraction of financial insights is huge, with the U.S. market alone estimated at $7.8B in 2022. In the past year, we have experienced tremendous growth, which provides clear validation of DataRails’ superior product-market fit.”

Spectro Cloud

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

CEO: Tenry Fu

Funding: The $40 million Series B funding round follows a $20 million Series A round in July 2021.

Investors: The round was led by Stripes, a leading investor in software and consumer products. The round included new investor TSG and existing investors Sierra Ventures, Boldstart Ventures, WestWave Capital, T-Mobile Ventures and After Venture Partners.

What the company does: Spectro Cloud develops the next-generation Palette Kubernetes management platform for life-cycle management of Kubernetes clusters in bare-metal data centers, public clouds, edge locations or virtualized environments.

CEO Quote: “This investment validates Spectro Cloud’s vision and accomplishments toward making Kubernetes more accessible and manageable so organizations can speed up adoption in any environment. Our approach with Palette is simple: to remove the common pitfalls and trade-offs that organizations face when adopting Kubernetes.”

Todyl

Headquarters: Denver

CEO: John Nellen

Funding: A $28 million Series A round.

Investors: The round was led by Anthos Capital with Tech Operators, Blu Ventures and StoneMill Ventures increasing their existing investments.

What the company does: Todyl integrates SASE, SIEM, endpoint security, managed detection and response, and GRC (governance, rick and compliance) capabilities into a single security and network platform.

CEO Quote: “The unification of SASE, Endpoint Security, SIEM, MXDR and GRC into a single platform is revolutionary in the security space. We‘re helping our partners streamline operations, simplify architectures and, most importantly, deliver powerful and comprehensive security for every budget.”

Black Crow AI

Headquarters: New York

CEO: Richard Harris

Funding: The $25 million Series A funding round brings Black Crow AI’s total funding to $30 million.

Investors: The round was led by Imaginary Ventures with participation from Left Lane, Good Friends, Interplay and Red Antler, along with the founders of a number of digital commerce brands including Warby Parker, Mejuri, Everlane, Allbirds, Supergoop! and Reformation.

What the company does: Black Crow AI develops a no-code machine learning infrastructure platform for predictive analytical tasks.

CEO Quote: “We believe streaming, real-time event data is the most valuable but underutilized asset in the world today. The tools to generate insights and value from that data have been out of reach for all but the largest enterprises. With this new round of funding, we aim to further democratize machine learning and empower companies to flourish even amidst intense competition from the largest enterprises.”

ForAllSecure

Headquarters: Pittsburgh

CEO: David Brumley

Funding: The $21 million Series B funding round brought the company’s total funding to $36 million.

Investors: The round was co-led by Koch Disruptive Technologies and existing investor New Enterprise Associates.

What the company does: ForAllSecure provides application security testing technology for DevSecOps tasks.

CEO Quote: “We started ForAllSecure to automatically test apps the same way attackers will before attackers can. We believe manual testing is too slow, expensive and error-prone to scale with the modern speed of development. Other application security approaches just don’t work like attackers and cannot be truly automated because humans need to double-check the results. ForAllSecure enables security to ‘shift-left’ and find issues early, often and cost-effectively. The time to fully automate application security is now.”

nSure.ai

Headquarters: Tel Aviv, Israel

CEO: Alex Zeltcer

Funding: An $18 million Series A funding round.

Investors: The round was led by MoreTech Ventures with participation by seed-round participants DisruptiveAI, Gryffin Ventures and Moneta Seeds.

What the company does: nSure.ai develops a real-time fraud prevention intelligence platform.

CEO Quote: “FinTech companies powering wallets and crypto-based services offer an immediate transfer of funds, creating a huge incentive for sophisticated fraudsters and scalable fraud patterns. Standard, e-commerce-based fraud prevention platforms are ill-equipped to deal with this new market. Merchant-specific AI models, along with real-time anomaly detection, such as the ones we offer, help these new generation companies [with] their growth without taking excessive risk.”