Wiz 2.0? Cyera’s meteoric $6B valuation is turning heads across the cyber world

There are startups that climb. Then there are startups that leap. And then there’s Cyera, a company that seems to have skipped the entire middle part and hit warp speed straight into the stratosphere.

Founded in 2021 by two Israeli cyber prodigies out of the legendary Talpiot and Unit 8200 programs, Cyera is now raising hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation of over $6 billion. You read that right. Just three years in, they’re playing at a valuation level that usually takes companies a decade or more to sniff. The only real parallel in recent memory? Wiz.

Cyera’s story isn’t just about money, it’s about velocity, clarity, and an uncanny sense of timing.

Let’s rewind to April 2024. Cyera raised $300 million at a $1.4 billion valuation. A huge number for a three-year-old startup, but not the sort of figure that sets off air horns. Then came November. Another $300 million, this time at a $3 billion valuation. That alone was eyebrow-raising. Doubling your valuation in six months during an era when most tech startups are playing defense? That’s not normal.

And now, just six months later, Cyera is preparing to more than double that again. A $6 billion+ valuation. At a time when AI hype is peaking and the security stack is in full reshuffle mode, Cyera has convinced the world’s savviest investors - Sequoia, Accel, Sapphire, Coatue - that it’s not just riding the wave. It’s building the surfboard.

Part of it is pedigree. Co-founders Yotam Segev (CEO) and Tamar Bar-Ilan (CTO) have the kind of elite Israeli cyber background that reads like the first paragraph of an IPO filing. Talpiot. Unit 8200. And they’ve staffed their leadership ranks with similarly high-octane talent, people who don’t need buzzwords to understand how security threats evolve in real time.

Part of it is product. Cyera’s platform uses AI and machine learning to continuously discover, classify, and secure data across cloud, SaaS, and on-prem environments. But while a lot of startups throw around “AI-powered” like parsley on a bad steak, Cyera has the receipts. Their OmniDLP product, an adaptive, AI-native data loss prevention system, has garnered attention for its ability to filter out noise and actually do what it says on the tin. As Segev put it, the company’s goal isn’t to automate everything, it’s to make protection smarter and more scalable, without breaking the budget or the cloud.

And then there’s the M&A play. In October, Cyera bought Trail Security for $162 million, a major acquisition for such a young startup. The move beefed up their Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) offering and brought in even more elite engineers. It was the kind of move a company makes when it knows exactly where it’s going and doesn’t want to wait.

If you’re thinking this sounds a bit like Wiz’s hyper-growth story from a few years ago, you’re not wrong. The valuation jumps. The Israeli cyber DNA. The deep-pocketed U.S. venture backing. The “fastest-growing in history” superlatives. It’s all there.

But while Wiz focused heavily on cloud security posture, Cyera is staking its flag on data security - arguably a bigger, messier, and more urgent problem as AI eats the enterprise from the inside out. You can fake a lot of things in cybersecurity. Real data protection at scale isn’t one of them.

Cyera’s growth trajectory is so steep right now that it feels less like a startup and more like a gravitational anomaly. The company has already raised nearly $1 billion. It’s on track to hit $100 million in revenue in the back half of 2025. It has around 400 employees and plans to add 200 more within the year. And it’s making all the right hires, including the recent addition of Sol Rashidi as Chief Strategy Officer for Data and AI.

The big question isn’t whether Cyera will become a giant. It’s how long it can stay in the magical zone between hypergrowth and hyperexpectation, where every funding round feels like a coronation and not a countdown.

Because here’s the thing: Everyone’s watching now. And in cybersecurity, that’s both a blessing and a warning shot.