Cymulate raises $45 million series C to help organizations optimize their cybersecurity posture

Israeli cybersecurity startup Cymulate, which has developed a SaaS-based Continuous Security Validation platform, announced on Wednesday that it has completed a series C funding round of $45 million led by One Peak, together with existing investors Susquehanna Growth Equity (SGE), Vertex Ventures Israel, Vertex Growth, and Dell Technologies Capital. Cymulate has raised $71 million to date, including a seed investment from Eyal Gruner.

Eyal Wachsman, CEO and co-founder of Cymulate, told Calcalist that the company chose not to include a secondary element in the round, deciding instead to wait until the company's valuation is significantly higher. "Within two years we will be a unicorn," predicted Wachsman.

The funding will be used to further accelerate Cymulate’s impressive growth as the company closed 2020 with revenue of $15 million, double that of 2019, and grew its staff by over 150%. Cymulate, which has developed a comprehensive platform for organizations to validate their cyber posture continuously and on-demand by testing their cloud and on-premise networks against the latest threats, serves hundreds of customers including leading enterprises and Fortune 500 companies and most recently announced a partnership with global telecom giant NTT.

"Unlike other companies that are rushing to raise money, we wanted to build a significant company and only then embark on our big round," explained Wachsman. "I spoke to many founders who raised money from different investors and I looked for a fund that will help me build a business. One Peak hasn't invested in Israeli companies until now, but I imagine that they will be investing here a lot more in the future."

Wachsman said that the company plans to use the new funding to invest in its local R&D department and significantly increase its employee count. "We will invest a lot in our R&D and marketing. We have 40 employees in the U.S. and 50 in Israel and I imagine that by the end of the year we will have 150 employees in total. It isn't simple to recruit employees these days as they all have many offers. Very few employees have left us over the past five years and we need to find the right incentives to recruit new ones. It is a lot harder to retain employees than to recruit them."

David Klein, Managing Partner at One Peak, said: “The increasing pace of global cybersecurity attacks has resulted in a crisis of trust in the security posture of enterprises and a realization that security testing needs to be continuous as opposed to periodic, particularly in the context of an ever-changing IT infrastructure and rapidly evolving threats. Companies understand that implementing security solutions is not enough to guarantee protection against cyber threats and need to regain control.”

A recent survey conducted by Cymulate of over 700 security professionals revealed that 70% believe their existing testing methodologies are somewhat or not at all effective, and only 7% feel that they have strong cyber defenses in place. The survey also highlighted that 56% of respondents have concrete plans to implement a solution such as Cymulate, particularly in 2022.

“Cymulate saw a 50% increase in the number of unique attacks in the wild in 2020, and as APT groups are becoming increasingly aggressive and disruptive, there is a real need for companies to run daily or weekly assessments of their security posture," added Wachsman. "A loss of customer trust due to the fallout of a major attack is extremely hard to regain.”