UPDATED 21:02 EDT / SEPTEMBER 26 2018

EMERGING TECH

Machine learning cybersecurity startup Darktrace raises $50M on $1.65B valuation

Machine learning cybersecurity startup Darktrace Ltd. said today it has raised $50 million in new late-stage funding on a valuation of $1.65 billion to further international expansion and development.

The Series E round was led by Vitruvian Partners and included existing investors KKR and 1011 Ventures.

Founded in 2013, Darktrace pitches itself as the leader in “Enterprise Immune System Technology” with a cybersecurity product that tackles advanced cyberthreats using a machine learning platform developed at the United Kingdom’s University of Cambridge.

Differentiating itself from others in the market, Darktrace claims its platform is based on the “biological principles of the human immune system.” It also says the platform can learn “self,” which is said to constitute “the normal pattern of life for the organization, its users and devices – and detecting subtle deviations from this normal behavior, which suggest a compromise, breach or cyber-attack.”

“Darktrace is a self-contained system that is deployed in less than an hour, requiring zero human configuration or training,” Chief Executive Officer Nicole Eagan Eagan told Crunchbase News. “Once deployed, it instantly begins learning ‘normal’ for the network, and is identifying genuine threats and anomalies in just seven days.”

Since its last round of $75 million in July 2017, Darktrace said, it has doubled its number of deployments to 7,000 networks, grown its employee headcount by 60 percent to over 750 employees worldwide and opened eight new offices in the last year, including locations in Los Angeles, Mexico City and São Paulo.

Like Stripe Inc. that also announced a new round today, rumors have once again surfaced as to if and when Darktrace will go public.

Unlike Stripe, Darktrace is only five years old, which is on the low side in terms of venture capital exits in 2018. But with about $230 million raised to date with a healthy valuation, its investors will be asking the question.

The main problem Darktrace has is that despite its rapid growth, it continues to bleed money. The Telegraph reported in April that the company more than doubled losses during its expansion period, booking a loss of £27.5 million ($36.2 million).

Losses have rarely stopped a U.S. company going public, butDarktrace hails from the U.K., where markets tend to be more conservative.

Image: Darktrace

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