Israeli cybersecurity company Cyera has raised $300 million in a new funding round valuing the company at $12 billion, just six months after a financing round that valued it at $6 billion and five months after another that valued it at $9 billion.
The latest funding makes Cyera the second-most valuable privately held Israeli company after Vast Data, which is valued at $30 billion, and ahead of networking company DriveNets, which completed a funding round this week at an $8.5 billion valuation.
The new investment brings Cyera’s total funding to more than $1.6 billion.
The round was led by Evolution Equity Partners, one of the most prominent investors in Israel’s cybersecurity sector. Other investors include Georgian, Greenoaks, Lightspeed, Sequoia Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Redpoint, Cyberstarts, Coatue, Accel and Spark Capital.
Cyera operates in the data security market and provides an artificial intelligence-based platform that helps organizations manage and protect sensitive information.
The company’s software enables large enterprises to identify where sensitive data is stored, protect it from unauthorized access and safely use it with AI tools.
Cyera was founded in 2021 by CEO Yotam Segev and Chief Technology Officer Tamar Bar-Ilan, both alumni of Israel’s Talpiot military technology program and Unit 8200, the military’s elite intelligence and cyber unit.
In an interview with Calcalist in April, Segev said the company had benefited from the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence.
“We didn’t plan to become the security company leading the AI revolution,” Segev said. “We came to catch the waves, and we caught the biggest wave that has ever arrived. We only had to decide where to place the surfboard. Data and AI go together everywhere. We started with data, and AI followed in the clearest way possible. We did serious work understanding our customers’ pain points and had the energy to paddle fast enough to catch that wave.”
Bar-Ilan said investors believe Cyera has the potential to become one of Israel’s largest technology companies.
“They believe Cyera will be a company worth tens of billions of dollars within the next three to four years,” he said. “They work with the spreadsheets and see they can achieve significant returns in the coming years. What excites us is the possibility of building such a giant Israeli company.”