💰 Security, Funded #110 - Cents, Sensibility, & Cyber: Your Mixed Earnings Bag 🛒

Hey there,

Happy Monday, and I hope you had a great weekend. This week, we’ve got:

• 🔮 Mixed bag in cyber earnings

• ☁️ LLM hype mirrors early cloud rush

• ⚙️ Prompt Engineering & AI Self-Study

• 💰 $444.5M raised, 7 companies acquired

• 🏃‍♂️ Post-Labor Day: Investors scrutinize AI pitches

Now that Labor Day is behind us and Burning Man is over, the deal flow engine is beginning to hum again. However, unlike pre-2022, VCs aren’t going to be making it rain ⛈️ 💰 like they used by just throwing around the term “AI” in your pitch deck. The second half of the year is going to bring more scrutiny around value-add vs. a commodity feature set. The shiny object syndrome is over for investors and customers.

Onward to this week's issue.

Last week’s poll:

Vibe Check #4 - AI Security Tools
Are you starting to evaluate or purchase this new wave of tools focused on the security or privacy of AI or LLM usage? Bonus points if you tell me why!

I suspect many of these answers were driven by businesses reacting to the growth and popularity of LLMs. I liken this part of the hype cycle to the early days of cloud computing. Some businesses were “all in” to get to the cloud before they had a real business need. They just knew they “had to get there” and that the business cases and revenue would start to flow.

_{If you want to add commentary to your poll answer, leave an answer when you cast your vote or email me at [email protected]. All responses will be kept anonymous} 🤫 

📅 YTD Funding

A rolling 12-week chart to compare funding and acquisitions each week between 2022 and 2023.

Funding is up >64% YoY this week as 2023 continues to rebound from the bottom of 2022.

Now that folks are back from an epic Burning Man and fully enlightened, the acquisition train is back up and moving again 🚂.

💰 Funding Summary

• 10 companies raised $444.5M across 9 unique product categories

• 7 companies were acquired or had a merger event for $265.0M across 6 unique product categories

🧩 Funding By Product Category

• $260.0M for Threat & Vulnerability Management (TVM) across 1 deal

• $67.8M for Fraud and Financial Crime Protection across 2 deals

• $50.0M for Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) across 1 deal

• $35.0M for Third-Party Risk Management across 1 deal

• $15.1M for Network Detection and Response (NDR) across 1 deal

• $6.9M for Data Privacy across 1 deal

• $6.0M for API Security across 1 deal

• $3.7M for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Security across 1 deal

• An undisclosed amount for Application Security Testing (AST) across 1 deal

🏢 Funding By Company

• Rapid7, a United States-based suite of threat and vulnerability management (TVM) tools, raised a $260.0M post-IPO debt round. (more)

• ThetaRay, an Israel-based anti-money laundering (AML) platform, raised a $57.0M Venture Round from Portage Ventures. (more)

• Upwind Security, an Israel-based run-time cloud native application protection platform (CNAPP), raised a $50.0M Series A from Cyberstarts, Greylock, and Leaders Fund. (more)

• Certa, a United States-based third-party risk management platform, raised a $35.0M Series B from Fin Capital and Vertex Ventures. (more)

• IronNet Cybersecurity, a United States-based network detection and response (NDR) platform, raised a $15.1M post-IPO debt round but furloughed workers and may be filing for bankruptcy. (more)

• Strise, a Norway-based anti-money laundering (AML) platform, raised a $10.8M Series A from Atomico. (more)

• Integral, a United States-based privacy-focused data platform making healthcare data shareable, raised a $6.9M Seed from Haystack and The General Partnership. (more)

• Pynt, an Israel-based API security platform, raised a $6.0M Seed from Joule Ventures. (more)

• Mindgard, a United Kingdom-based threat detection and security platform for AI models, raised a $3.7M Seed from IQ Capital, Lakestar, and Osney Capital. (more)

• Cytix, a United States-based continuous application security testing platform, raised an undisclosed Seed round. (more)

🌎 Funding By Country

• $317.0M for United States across 5 deals

• $113.0M for Israel across 3 deals

• $10.8M for Norway across 1 deal

• $3.7M for United Kingdom across 1 deal

🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions

• Ermetic, a United States-based cloud infrastructure identity security platform, was acquired by Tenable for $265.0M. (more)

• Advanced Network Products (ANP), a United States-based managed services provider (MSP), was acquired by Coretelligent for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• Atmosec, an Israel-based threat detection platform for SaaS applications, was acquired by Check Point Software Technologies for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• Cohere Cyber Secure, a United States-based managed security services provider (MSSP), was acquired by Dataprise for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• ES2, an Australia-based managed security services provider (MSSP), was acquired by OneStep Group for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• GrammaTech, a United States-based application security testing platform, was acquired by Battery Ventures for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• Stacksi, a United States-based automated security questionnaire answer platform, was acquired by SafeBase for an undisclosed amount. (more)

📚 Great Reads

• Demystifying LLMs and Threats My Journey - Caleb Sima, former CISO of Robinhood, shares his journey of demystifying LLMs, threats, and all things AI.

• *Start a Newsletter - If you’re thinking about starting a newsletter, I can't recommend Beehiiv highly enough.

• Awesome GPT Prompt Engineering - A curated list of awesome resources, tools, and other shiny things for GPT prompt engineering.

• The Resilience Potion & Security Chaos Engineering - Kelly Shortridge shares the Resilience Potion Recipe, a five-ingredient elixir we can brew to foster resilience in our systems and guide our security chaos engineering transformation.

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🧪 Labs

Really makes you think 🤔