ThetaRay, a security startup whose threat-detection technology helps financial institutions and critical infrastructure protect against attacks, raised $30 million in a Series B round. This brings its total funding to $60.5 million.
Investors in the Israel-based company include Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), GE, Bank Hapoalim, OurCrowd, SVB Investments, and others. The company says it will use the funding to expand its presence in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. and grow its workforce and operations.
“In this era when criminal activity and money laundering are increasing and becoming more sophisticated, and also regulation is on the rise, there is a greater demand for our solutions,” said Mark Gazit, CEO of ThetaRay, in a statement. “As the amount of digital information grows, you just can’t protect it without artificial intelligence systems.”
In its five years of operation the company says it has doubled in size every year.
ThetaRay’s platform uses machine learning and artificial intelligence technology to detect anomalies in real-time, reduce false positives, and uncover “unknown unknowns.” It can help banks detect early signs of money laundering and protect against fraud as well as secure their ATM networks.
It also targets industrial IoT assets like turbines, pumps, sensors, programmable logic controllers, and aircraft engines. The platform protects against unknown zero-day malware, advanced persistent threat attacks, and sophisticated Stuxnet-like state sponsored cyber-attacks that target critical infrastructure, the company claims.
Investors Flock to Security StartupsThetaRay’s latest funding follows several other profitable Series B rounds last week that saw other security startups rake in millions.
Preempt raised $17.5 million bringing its total funding to $27.5 million. Jask raised $25 million, bringing its total to $39 million. And Balbix raised $20 million, bringing its total to $28.6 million.
Also last week Tenable filed for an initial public offering (IPO) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The security company hasn’t yet set a number of shares to be offered or the price range, but earlier reports indicated that an IPO could value Tenable between $1.5 billion and $2 billion.