💰 Security, Funded #83 - The US Goes Cyber, Plop, Fizz, Wiz, BANG, and Stock Don’t Only Go Up

Hey there,

Happy Monday and I hope you had a great weekend!

In this week's issue:

• The US Goes Cyber
• Plop, Fizz, Wiz, BANG
• Stock Don’t Only Go Up

The United States Marshals Service (USMS) got breached, Wiz becomes the largest and highest-valued cybersecurity unicorn ever (more below), the US Commerce Department gets back to work on an Executive Order to limit foreign hackers’ ability to use U.S. cloud infrastructure, and the Biden administration released a US National Cybersecurity Strategy.

Earnings Report

• Okta (OKTA) - beat its Q4 2023 earnings revenue on the backs of an increased focus on controlling the user and customer identity spaces at companies. Investors were still expecting rocketship growth 🚀, though, and the stock got punished after hours since the forward look wasn’t as strong as before.
• Zscaler (ZS) - smashed its earnings revenue but mentioned it had trouble with macroeconomic pressures. New customer growth was down and YoY and those kinds of stats scare investors and the stock fell 11%+ last week.

While the cybersecurity industry itself is somewhat recession resistant, this latest round of earnings reports and subsequent market reaction shows that not all sectors within cyber are weighted equally. What is clear to me, however, identity and access management (IAM) is more resilient than others.

This will cause investors and VCs to be a bit more discerning on where they put their future capital since not all of cyber is “stock only go up” anymore.

Onward to this week's issue.

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🛞 Industry News Roundup

• White House gives federal agencies 30 days to remove TikTok from all government devices (more)
• US Executive Order 13984 is back in play to try and prevent foreign hackers from using US cloud services (more)
• Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces National Cybersecurity Strategy (more)

📅 YTD Funding 🆕

In this section, I'll be showing a running total and evolving series of charts for the year-to-date (YTD) funding and by the week or month of the year.

Remember last week when I said that last week’s funding was probably just an off week and then Wiz came out of the gate swinging on Monday with a $300.0M round and a $10.0B (‼️) valuation?

Cyber is back baby! 😤 👊

💰 Weekly Funding Summary

• 8 companies raised $328.7M across 8 unique product categories
• 2 companies were acquired or had a merger event for $500.0M across 2 unique product categories

🧩 Funding By Product Category

• $300.0M for Cloud Security
• $20.1M for Data Protection
• $3.8M for Continuous Compliance
• $3.4M for Threat and Risk Prioritization
• $800.0K for Application Security
• $558.1K for Professional Services
• An undisclosed amount for Secure File Sharing
• An undisclosed amount for Data Access Governance

🏢 Funding By Company

• Wiz, a United States-based cloud security operations and threat intelligence platform, raised a $300.0M Series D from Lightspeed Venture Partners. (more)
• CAST AI, a United States, United States-based AI-driven cloud cost optimization and disaster prevention platform, raised a $20.1M Venture Round.
• Secfix, a Germany-based continuous compliance and security automation platform, raised a $3.8M Seed from Octopus Ventures. (more)
• trackd, a United States-based vulnerability management platform that lets companies see the impact of patches before deploying, raised a $3.4M Seed from Flybridge. (more)
• Nullify, an Australia-based application and infrastructure code security scanning platform, raised an $800.0K Pre-Seed from OIF Ventures.
• Risk Intelligence, a Denmark-based professional cybersecurity services firm, raised a $558.0K Debt Financing round. (more)
• GhostDrive, a Singapore-based privacy-focused Web3 storage platform, raised an undisclosed Post-IPO Equity round.
• Immuta, a United States-based cloud data access governance platform, raised an undisclosed Series E from ServiceNow. (more)

🌎 Funding By Country

• $323.5M for United States 🇺🇸
• $3.8M for Germany 🇩🇪
• $800.0K for Australia 🇦🇺
• $558.1K for Denmark 🇩🇰
• An undisclosed amount for Singapore 🇸🇬

🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions

• Axis Security, a United States-based secure remote access platform, was acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise for $500.0M. (more)
• Logpoint, a Denmark-based security operations platform, was acquired by Summa Equity for an undisclosed amount. (more)

📚 Great Reads

• Hacking with ChatGPT: Ideal Tasks and Use-Cases - A breakdown of ideal tasks for hacking with ChatGPT
• ChatGPT shows the U.S. government needs to step up on AI - In the face of the generative AI wave, it’s time for the U.S. government to take the necessary steps to secure our nation and ensure we’re building AI responsibly and in ways that can benefit all people.
• Risk Management is a Team Sport - Why trying to manage security risks by yourself is a mistake.

🐝 Cross Pollinate

Discover something 🆕 this week.

This week is one of my favorite newsletters from Ross Haleliuk that goes super deep into the business behind the cybersecurity industry. So many good and long-form posts here for the practitioner and investor.

Venture in Security | Ross Haleliuk | Substack

Helping security practitioners, entrepreneurs, investors and executives build the future of cybersecurity. Click to read Venture in Security, by Ross Haleliuk, a Substack publication with thousands of readers.

Venture in SecurityRoss Haleliuk

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🧪 Labs

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