Hunters raises $68 million Series C, taking funding to nearly $100 million in five months

Israeli cybersecurity startup Hunters announced on Tuesday a $68 million Series C round, just five months after raising a $30 million Series B. The Series C was led by growth equity firm Stripes, with participation from new investors DTCP, Cisco Investments and Databricks, and existing investors YL Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Microsoft’s venture fund M12, U.S. Venture Partners, Blumberg Capital, and Snowflake Ventures. The new funding brings the total investment in Hunters to $118 million.

Hunters CEO Uri May admitted to Calcalist that part of the rationale behind the new round was the understanding that it could soon be more difficult to raise funds. “I tried to neutralize the rumors about the coming difficult times. If I don’t believe that I can grow I’d rather fail. The issue of raising money for a rainy day was discussed with investors, with a big portion of the funding from our strategic investors coming mainly over the past month,” said May. “Our valuation has increased significantly, but hasn’t reached highs we won’t be able to meet." 

May said Hunters has yet to reach Unicorn status and that all the funds from the Series C will enter the company’s account. “We are thinking about doing secondary deals for the employees but it needs to be done the right way,” explained May.

“The money that we raised allows us to plan 2-3 years ahead and think about what we want to build and the kinds of people we want to hire,” said May. “I don’t want to recruit more employees at any cost. It is very important to me to realize our next goal in building the company, but I don’t want to burn all the money and want to make sure we come through the financial winter in the best way possible. We have well-measured aggressive plans.”

Among the rivals of the Israeli company is U.S. Unicorn Exabeam, which was founded by Israeli entrepreneurs. Other companies in the sector include Israel’s Demisto, acquired by Palo Alto, and Siemplify, recently purchased by Google. “We aren’t inventing a new market. This market exists and there are products, but they need to be replaced by a new generation of products,” explained May. “Acquisitions of cybersecurity companies didn’t stop during past winters, and while there may be some slowdown, my sense is that the sector that will suffer the least is security.”

Founded by Uri May and Tomer Kazaz in 2018, Hunters is developing a POC platform designed to protect organizations from intrusion and unidentified attacks on the cloud, the corporate network, and endpoints. Global enterprises, including leading Fortune 500 companies in financial services, media, retail, and manufacturing use Hunters’ SOC platform, replacing their SIEM. Hunters mitigates real threats faster and more reliably than SIEMs, ultimately reducing customers' overall security risk. Among the company's clients are the likes of Booking.com, Snowflake, Netgear, and Cimpress.

Hunters employs 110 people in its Israeli R&D center and in the U.S. and intends to double its workforce in the coming year.

“2021 was a huge year for Hunters as the company grew ARR by more than 4x, and we are excited for them to build on this momentum in the coming year,” said Ken Fox, founder and partner at Stripes and board member at Hunters.