The CEOs of BlackBerry and Cylance held a media conference this morning after announcing news of an acquisition.
BlackBerry announced that it has finalized an agreement in which it will acquire Cylance for $1.4 bn in cash, plus the assumption of unvested employee incentive awards. With Gartner citing security as the top barrier to successful internet of things (IoT) implementation, BlackBerry aims to improve its offering to enable the enterprise of things (EoT). By applying Cylance’s artificial intelligence, algorithmic science and machine learning, the new platform is expected to prevent known and unknown threats to fixed endpoints, according to a press release.
The BlackBerry Spark platform will join Cylance’s cybersecurity software with next-generation secure chip-to-edge communications and promises to deliver trusted connections between any endpoint.
“Cylance’s leadership in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity will immediately complement our entire portfolio, UEM [Unified Endpoint Management] and QNX in particular. We are very excited to onboard their team and leverage our newly combined expertise,” said John Chen, executive chairman and CEO of BlackBerry. “We believe adding Cylance’s capabilities to our trusted advantages in privacy, secure mobility and embedded systems will make BlackBerry Spark indispensable to realizing the enterprise of things.”
Founded in 2012 and privately held, Cylance has over 100 patents and patent applications in cybersecurity and machine learning. The company delivers endpoint protection services to more than 3,500 enterprise customers, boasting that more than 20% of those are Fortune 500 companies.
“Our highly skilled cybersecurity workforce and market leadership in next-generation endpoint solutions will be a perfect fit within BlackBerry, where our customers, teams and technologies will gain immediate benefits from BlackBerry’s global reach,” said Stuart McClure, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Cylance. “We are eager to leverage BlackBerry’s mobility and security strengths to adapt our advanced AI technology to deliver a single platform.”
The deal is expected to close prior to February 2019, which is the end of BlackBerry’s current fiscal year.