2009 Summary of Security VC Investments and Startup Exits
Although 2009 has seen drop of investor activity in security start-ups compared to last year, this just reflects the larger economic reality of this year and we still tracked a healthy level of investments and exits throughout the year: Total venture capital funding comes in at $449 million as of Q4 2009, with the likes of Loglogic ($58 million by Focus Ventures), Goodmail ($45 million by Omidyar Network) and Icontrol ($43.5 million by Charles River and Intel Capital) having raised the biggest rounds. We recorded 18 acquisitions of security startups in 2009, worth more than the published $1.1 billion as many of them did not disclose the acquisitions’ financials. Noteworthy exits included Israel’s Guardium (data leak prevention security) that was acquired by IBM for $225 million, MX Logic (cloud security) and Solidcore Systems (malware security), both acquired by McAfee for a total of $217 million. In order to view the accumulated number of all VC deals tracked in security in 2009 and 2008, sign into our (free) online community. When you are signed-in, click on "Reports" to download our security-VC database.
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Read About Previous Winners: Raised $78m
Best Security SME 2009: Kromek
Most Promising Security Start-up 2009: Adaptive Imaging Technologies |
Comments
January 4, 2010 11:01 by GSC TEAM
Two recent funding rounds for security start-ups, indicate that 2010 might be a strong year for innovative security firms: On January 3rd 2010, Israeli network security company Skybox Security completed a $2 million fund raising round. The participants were the company's existing investors: VC funds Benchmark Capital, Carmel Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Valley Venture Capital.
Also, in the last few days of 2009, the mobile security startup Lookout received a $5.5 million round of funding from investors that include Khosla Ventures and Chris Sacca, former head of special initiatives at Google. “The mobile device has quickly become the most personal computer, and they need to be protected,†said Vinod Khosla, who founded the venture capital firm in 2004. He was formerly a general partner at Kleiner Perkins and founder of Sun Microsystems Inc.