Email security startup Agari announced today that it has raised $40 million in Series E funding.
The round was led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, with participation from existing Agari investors, including Norwest Venture Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, First Round Capital and Alloy Ventures. It brings total investment in the company to $88 million.
As part of the deal, Olga Kaplan, a Vice President in Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division, will join Agari’s board of directors.
“The overwhelming majority of cyberattacks still originate via email, and are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Agari takes a fundamentally different approach by leveraging identity modeling and machine learning to prevent cyber attacks that legacy technologies simply do not stop,” said Olga Kaplan. “Agari has demonstrated its unique solution enables enterprises across all industries to significantly reduce the risk of a successful attack. We are excited to partner with Agari’s exceptional management team as the company continues to extend its market leadership and its impressive track record of innovation in email security.”
The company intends to use the investment for expansion across Europe and Asia, including strengthening its worldwide channel partnership and technology relationship programs, and for further investment in the company’s products.
Agari’s platform uses AI and cloud-based analysis to secure both inbound and outbound emails, thereby protecting enterprises from phishing and more advanced spear-phishing attacks, as well as protecting customers from email attacks which spoof enterprise brands.
“Whether it’s phishing of customers or targeting executives with social engineering, email is the communications channel for the top cybersecurity threats impacting customers, employees and suppliers,” said Richard Szymborski, Manager of IT Security and Risk Management, Air Canada. “By protecting the email channel with Agari, we are improving our security posture enormously, protecting our brand and helping our business build trusted relationships with our customers.”
The company’s clients include Aetna, Informatica, Neustar, Air Canada, the U.S. Postal Service, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and more.
“Safeguarding against sophisticated email deception attacks and account takeover has become a boardroom-level mandate, with business email compromise costing companies billions of dollars each year,” said Agari’s CEO Ravi Khatod. “The sophistication of attacks and rapid migration to cloud-based email has disrupted the multi-billion dollar email security market and Agari is the only cloud-native solution proven to stop these attacks at enterprise scale.”
He added: “This investment led by Goldman Sachs will fund a new, critical growth phase for Agari, as we deepen our product, data science, and go-to-market investments to deliver success to every Agari customer and partner globally.”
