BlackRock, Tudor Group back cybersecurity startup Deep Instinct

[NEW YORK] BlackRock is leading a US$100 million investment round for Deep Instinct, a cybersecurity software startup.

Other participating investors include Paul Tudor Jones's Tudor Group, Neeraj Chandra's Untitled Investments and 23andme co-founder Anne Wojcicki, Deep Instinct chief executive officer Guy Caspi said in an interview.

Existing investors Coatue Management, Millennium and Unbound also took part.

"We're growing super-fast and want to dramatically increase sales given the huge market opportunity," Mr Caspi said. "To grow in cybersecurity, you need a huge amount of money."

Proceeds from the round will go toward sales and marketing, mostly in North America, Europe and Japan, Mr Caspi said.

Deep Instinct is likely to achieve US$100 million in revenue by next year and an initial public offering remains two to three years away, he said.

Deep Instinct, like CrowdStrike Holdings, SentinelOne and Darktrace, gained traction with clients that previously leaned on companies like Symantec and McAfee for their cybersecurity needs.

Deep Instinct research found that ransomware and malware attacks increased 435 per cent and 358 per cent respectively in 2020 over 2019.

The company's endpoint protection software uses deep-learning techniques to predict, prevent and analyse malware, ransomware and other "suspicious and adversarial" cyberattacks. The firm says it's able to stop threats in less than 20 milliseconds and reduce false positives by 99 per cent.

BlackRock's William Abecassis is joining Deep Instinct's board, replacing Brian Gumbel. Heather Bellini, a former Goldman Sachs Group partner and top software analyst, recently joined the company as chief financial officer.

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