Temasek leads US$550m funding in cloud security firm Orca Security

Singapore

SINGAPORE state investor Temasek led a US$550 million funding round in Israel's Orca Security, lifting the cloud security company's valuation to US$1.8 billion, a 50 per cent jump in around seven months.

Cloud security technology providers have seen a rapid rise in demand for their products and services as the Covid-19 pandemic forced global businesses to shift to remote working and pushed them to invest more in securing their data.

Orca Security's business grew roughly nine-fold year on year, and the company said it will use Temasek's portfolio and network to drive its penetration in the Asia-Pacific and into key industries such as telecom, financial services, transportation and consumer goods, among others.

US engineering and enterprise IT services provider SAIC and the venture capital arm of Splunk Inc also invested in the latest round, which is an extension of its previously announced Series C in March that valued Orca Security at US$1.2 billion.

Other participants include venture capital firms such as ICONIQ Capital, Stripes, Alphabet Inc's independent growth fund CapitalIG, and Adams Street Partners. Orca Security also said it plans to grow its presence and customer base in the United Kingdom, Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Its offering, which is compliant with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, can find vulnerabilities, malware, leaked and weak passwords, and high-risk data.

The company's technology is used by the likes of data analytics platform Databricks, software firm Autodesk Inc, media giant News Corp and language learning app Duolingo Inc. REUTERS