UK cybersecurity vendor Darktrace has secured another huge round of funding, which it will use to push out its Enterprise Immune System technology to a growing global customer-base.
The British success story announced the $65 million funding round was led by leading global investor KKR and also featured SB-ISAT Fund, which is affiliated with Japanese telco giant Softbank.
Darktrace has only been around since 2013 but has already achieved stellar growth of 600% in the last financial year alone.
It now has 300 employees and over 1000 customers including organizations in some of the world’s most heavily regulated industries: financial; telecommunications; government; and critical national infrastructure.
The ‘secret sauce’ for Darktrace lies in its advanced machine learning technology, originally developed at Cambridge University.
This goes to work analyzing a customer’s network, learning what ‘normal’ behavior is so that it can more easily spot unusual or malicious activity.
This has led to a string of awards over the past year including the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation and being named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum.
CEO Nicole Eagan said in a statement that the new funding round would help the firm realize its full potential.
“Securing the backing of another leading global investor like KKR is an important milestone for Darktrace and a strong validation of the technology we have developed. We chose to partner with KKR because of their unique global network to support our international expansion and rich history of enterprise building in the technology sector,” she added.
“In addition to KKR, we are excited to work with our new investors TenEleven Ventures and SoftBank who will contribute significant strategic value and knowledge to our team.”
The funding round is the latest in a long line of major investments in the firm, including a $22m Series B cash injection last July and another $18 million a four months before that.
The news will be welcomed by Autonomy founder Mike Lynch, whose Invoke Capital investment firm – set up with some of the money he pocketed from the $11 billion sale of his firm to HP – has been a major investor in Darktrace.