Security information and event management (SIEM) vendor Exabeam closed a $50 million Series D funding round bringing its total to $115 million.

The company will use the investment to expand its sales team in the U.S. and Western Europe, build a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product slated to launch next year, and “overtake Splunk,” according to CEO Nir Polak.

“The new funding will allow us to invest heavily in our new cloud solutions and reach even more enterprises around the world,” Polak said in a statement. “We are on track to overtake Splunk and be the next SIEM market leader.”

He also called out Exabeam’s pedigreed investors: “Our investors have an amazing track record of investing in companies that truly are disruptive and typically become category leaders.”

The Series D round, backed entirely by existing investors, was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Aspect Ventures, Cisco Investments, Icon Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and cybersecurity luminary Shlomo Kramer also contributed. Kramer co-founded Check Point, Imperva, and Cato Networks. He was also an early investor in Palo Alto Networks, Trusteer, LightCyber, and several other security startups.

In an interview with SDxCentral, Exabeam Chief Marketing Officer Tim Matthews said the investors give the company a strategic push. About Kramer: “It’s great to have a security visionary as your angel [investor],” he said. “Cisco really helps us get in the door to our bigger accounts. Ravi [Mhatre] from Lightspeed has had the hot hand recently and knows how to take the company to a public offering.”

Lightspeed was an early investor in Nutanix and Rubrik, as well as network security company Zscaler, which raised $192 million from its March initial public offering (IPO) and now has a market cap of $4.77 billon.

It’s been a hot year for security IPOs. In addition to Zscaler, Carbon Black raised $152 million in its May IPO, and Tenable raised $288 million last month. And this bodes well for a company like Exabeam looking to be the next unicorn IPO.

Matthews said an Exabeam IPO is likely — but not until 2019.

“We do believe this can be a self-standing business, and going public is part of that,” he said. “But not anytime in the next six to nine months. It is something we think about every day, and we are trying to build a large, sustainable company.”

The San Mateo, California-based Exabeam was founded in 2013. Its SIEM platform uses machine learning and analytics to detect threats and respond to security incidents. Customers include Levi Strauss & Co, ADP, Hulu, and Safeway. The company says it saw 300 percent market growth in 2016 and 250 percent market growth in 2017. It expects to more than double its market size in 2018.

But SEIM is a crowded market, expected to reach $4.54 billion in 2019, and Exabeam faces competition from vendors including Splunk, RSA, IBM, McAfee, and LogRhythm.

“If you think about Splunk, it’s a technology that’s almost 20 years old,” Matthews said. “SEIM is one of the largest security markets, and its really been a long time since there’s been any innovation in this space. The time is ripe for a next-gen company to come up in the market and be a major player.”