OneTrust LLC, an Atlanta-based developer of privacy tools for enterprises, today announced that it has secured a $300 million funding round at a valuation of $5.1 billion.

The round bumps OneTrust’s total raised over the past 18 months over $700 million.

OneTrust, founded in 2016, provides a cloud-based platform used by big companies such as Oracle Corp. and Aetna Inc. to ensure they’re handling customers’ data in accordance with privacy laws. The platform uses artificial intelligence to map out all the data in a company that may be subject to laws such as the European Union’s GDPR privacy regulation. From there, organizations can use the startup’s other features to help them spot and fix compliance issues.

OneTrust helps with the various user-facing activities involved in complying with privacy laws, such as asking permission from website visitors to save cookies on their devices and responding to data deletion requests. Additionally, the startup provides features for catching risky practices inside a company that might jeopardize user privacy. OneTrust’s software can, for instance, monitor how employees interact with customer data to find activities that carry the potential of exposing information.

The startup has taken the idea a step further by enabling legal teams to look beyond their own companies and also check if there may be privacy risks at suppliers. If an online retailer uses an e-commerce shopping cart component from an external developer, it can be helpful to check how well that developer protects customer data. OneTrust offers access to pre-packaged risk assessments in its platform that enterprises can use to check how their suppliers are faring in the privacy department.

OneTrust’s customer base includes more than half of the Fortune 500 and more than 7,000 other organizations worldwide. OneTrust says its platform is the most widely used privacy product in its category, a market position the $300 million in funding announced today should strengthen.

TCV led the round with participation from a number of existing OneTrust investors including Insight Partners, which led the startup’s previous $210 million raise in early 2020. 

The large amount of capital raised by the startup and other enterprise private tool providers, such as recently funded BigID Inc., show that investors are anticipating this market to continue growing. Changing privacy regulations worldwide are creating new legal requirements around data use for enterprises. Software tools that can make it easier to comply with those requirements, and thereby reduce the risk of potentially costly regulatory breaches, fill an important gap in the market.

Photo: OneTrust