Cybersecurity Startup Investors Pulled Back In Q3

After a lively first half of the year for cybersecurity startup funding, investors pulled back some in the third quarter.

In total, investors put just over $3.3 billion globally into seed- through growth-stage rounds for cybersecurity-focused companies, per Crunchbase data. That’s about a third lower than the prior quarter, a robust period for dealmaking, but still about a third above year-ago levels.

Deal counts also declined sequentially in Q3, but still exceeded year-ago totals.

Megarounds of note

As usual, much of the quarter’s fundraising tally came from a few big rounds.

For Q3, the largest round went to Quantinuum, a quantum computing unicorn that isn’t a pure-play cybersecurity company but does cite encryption and data protection among the core use cases for its technology. The Broomfield, Colorado-based company, which was spun out of Honeywell, closed a $600 million Series B in August led by Nvidia’s venture arm.

The next-largest financing was a $230 million Series C for Austin, Texas-based Ontic, a provider of intelligence tools for corporate security. In third place was San Francisco-based Vanta, an AI-enabled security and compliance platform that pulled in a $150 million Series D.

For a broader listing, below we ranked 10 of the largest cybersecurity-related financings of the quarter.

Exits

The quarter also brought a couple good-sized startup exits of both the IPO and M&A variety.

Netskope, a cloud-security provider, delivered on the IPO front, raising more than $900 million in a well-received September debut. Founded in 2012, the Santa Clara, California-based company previously raised $1.4 billion in early- through late-stage financing.

As for acquisitions, the largest was Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Electric’s purchase of San Francisco-based Nozomi Networks, a 12-year-old company focused on protecting critical infrastructure from cyber threats, in a deal reportedly valued at around $1 billion.

Ups and downs

So are these still bullish times for cybersecurity investment? While investment to the space was down sequentially this quarter, the drop does not appear sufficiently dramatic or prolonged to draw broad conclusions.

On public markets, major cybersecurity indexes continue to perform well, and, among newcomers, Netskope has held steady. So, that looks encouraging.

On the M&A side, we’re also still waiting for a final conclusion of Google’s planned $32 billion acquisition of cybersecurity provider Wiz, announced in March. If the deal passes regulatory muster and closes, it would rank as the largest startup acquisition to date and mark another upbeat development for the security sector.

For now, we’ll keep an eye out to see if there are any stronger headwinds portending a shift in direction for the space.