Data security startup Cyera just put another exclamation mark on the AI security boom.
The New Yorkâbased company has raised a $400 million Series F round at a $9 billion valuation, only six months after investors priced it at $6 billion. With this deal, Cyera has now raised more than $1.7 billion in total funding.
The new round is led by funds managed by Blackstone. Existing backers including Accel, Coatue, Lightspeed, Redpoint, Sapphire and Sequoia also joined the round, along with other unnamed investors.
Riding the AI data wave
Cyera sells what it calls data security posture management. In practice, that means helping enterprises:
- Map where all their sensitive data lives across cloud services and databases
- Track how employees and applications access and use that data
- Flag security gaps and potential vulnerabilities before they turn into breaches
The surge of AI inside large companies is the big tailwind here. AI tools are generating and ingesting far more data than before, and executives are simultaneously more nervous about data leaks.
Cyera says that combination has helped it sign up one-fifth of Fortune 500 companies as customers and more than triple its revenue over the past year. Those growth numbers are self-reported, but they help explain why late-stage investors are comfortable paying up after such a short interval between rounds.
Security remains a rare bright spot
While much of late-stage tech funding is still constrained, security â especially anything touching AI and data protection â is proving to be an exception. Cyeraâs jump from a $6 billion to a $9 billion valuation in half a year is one of the sharper repricings in the category.
For now, investors are betting that as companies race to adopt AI, theyâll have no choice but to spend heavily on locking down the data that powers it. Cyera is positioning itself as one of the default tools for doing exactly that.
