Unicorn Status Secured by Claroty After Raising $140 Million in Funding Round
3 min read
Claroty, an industrial cybersecurity corporation from the State of Israel, recently announced that it successfully completed its Series D funding round with $140 million in the bank. However, the company did not disclose the valuation at which the funds were raised. The first round of funding was carried out with the company’s valuations being at $1 billion. This was the first founding round conducted by Claroty, ever since its last one in the year 2018.
The Century II fund of the Bessemer Venture Partners co-led the financing round, which is designed specifically for leading companies in the Israeli market, which are currently in their growth stage. Moreover, 40 North also participated in the funding round, which is the relevant investment arm of Standard Industries, a private global industrial corporation.
Other strategic investors took part in the funding round as well, such as ISQ Global InfraTech Fund of the I Squared Capital, and LG. Many previous participants, like Team 8, and partners, and long-time customers, including Schneider Electric, Siemens, and Rockwell Automation also contributed generously.
After the round, the funding of the company was brought to $235 million. As per Yaniv Vardi, the CEO of the company, the Series D funding round also included a secondary sale of shares, which were estimated to be worth a couple of millions of dollars. The Israeli industrial cybersecurity corporation was founded in the year 2015 by Benny Porat, Galina Antova, and Amir Zilberstein. Yaniv Vardi became CEO in the previous year, whereas the co-founder of Team 8, Nadav Zafrir, is the current president of Claroty.
Industrial cybersecurity corporations, which have been founded in the State of Israel, have had trouble achieving significant success up until now. However, Vardi believes that this is mainly because of bad timing. He added that three factors have contributed to the change in the market for industrial cybersecurity. He claimed that many industrial cybersecurity companies in Israel were sold off many years ago when they had not yet been targeted for cyberattacks.
On the other hand, over the past couple of months, a large oil company was shut down, owing to a massive cyberattack. In addition, a major meat corporation in JBF, had to pay a ransom of $11 million, whereas a water infrastructure firm, located in Florida, was also attacked, along with a Honda manufacturing factory.
The CEO maintained that had these companies not been sold back then and had persevered, they may have grown and become much larger.
According to Vardi, right now is the ideal time for Claroty to thrive and work on its growth. He asserted that it is trying to become a real market leader. He went on to add that the industrial cybersecurity corporation is nothing like the others because they do not only focus on securing industrial endpoints.
The CEO noted how this is where the company’s journey began and that it is quite strong in this particular sector. He went on to say that over the last year, Claroty has started to allow industrial sites and factories to benefit from its services as well.
