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Agari Announces $40M Growth Round to Accelerate Cloud Email Security Platform
Significant investment led by Goldman Sachs affirms AI-based strategy to stop advanced phishing and identity deception attacks
June 26, 2018
5 Min Read
PRESS RELEASE
FOSTER CITY, Calif., June 21, 2018 – Agari, the only cloud-native solution that uses predictive AI to stop advanced email attacks, today announced it has raised $40 million in growth capital from an investor group led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, with oversubscribed participation from existing Agari investors. Major Agari investors include Norwest Venture Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, First Round Capital and Alloy Ventures. The new capital increases Agari’s total financing to $88 million. Olga Kaplan, a Vice President in Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division, will join Agari’s board of directors in connection with the investment.
“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.”
This injection of Series E growth capital will catalyze Agari’s rapid global expansion across Europe and Asia, adding to a strong base of prominent customers including Aetna, Informatica, Neustar, Air Canada, the U.S. Postal Service, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and dozens more. Agari will also strengthen its strategic worldwide channel partnership and technology relationship programs to accelerate growth and market share.
“As a marketplace, Upwork depends upon trusted relationships between businesses seeking talent and the independent professionals they work with," said Teza Mukkavilli, Head of Information Security at Upwork. "Even one successful phishing attack can significantly impact that trust and Upwork's ability to provide the safety our customers deserve. Agari's predictive artificial intelligence enables us to protect our marketplace from all forms of identity-based email attacks so customers can focus on getting more work done."
The capital will also drive deeper investment in Agari Identity Intelligence™— the underlying AI supporting all Agari products, with 300 million model updates per day enabled through data from trillions of emails and billions of inboxes—and also in Agari’s pioneering domain authentication technology based on the DMARC standard.
"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.”
Additionally, the investment will bolster The Agari Email Trust Platform™, a complete email security product offering that spans both inbound and outbound messaging scenarios:
Agari Enterprise Protect™, which protects employees from costly inbound identity-based impersonation attacks and fraud, will benefit from new innovations including account takeover and breach remediation. Since launching less than two years ago, Agari Enterprise Protect has more than tripled the number of customer deployments worldwide, driven by mass enterprise migration to cloud email and increasingly sophisticated inbound impersonation attacks.
Agari Customer Protect™, which protects consumers and brand reputation from outbound email abuse, will leverage advancements in Agari DMARC capabilities, including richer reporting and sender analytics. Today Agari commands more than a 60 percent share of protected email sending domains worldwide including six of the top 10 banks.
“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 Ravi Khatod, CEO, Agari. “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. 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.”
About Agari
Agari is the only cloud-native solution that uses predictive AI to stop advanced email attacks. Winner of Best Email Security Solution by SC Magazine in 2018, the Agari Email Trust Platform™ prevents ransomware, ATO, phishing, BEC and other identity deception attacks, restoring trust to digital channels for businesses, governments, and consumers worldwide. Learn more at www.agari.com.
About Goldman Sachs Growth Equity
Founded in 1869, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm. Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division (MBD) is the primary center for Goldman Sachs’ long term principal investing activity. With nine offices across seven countries, MBD is one of the leading private equity investors in the world. Since 1986, the group has invested approximately $180 billion of levered capital across a number of geographies, industries and transaction types. Within MBD, Goldman Sachs Growth Equity (GS Growth) is a dedicated platform for venture capital and growth equity investments in leading companies that have built innovative technology or processes to transform their industries. Since 1994, GS Growth has partnered with more than 200 companies and invested more than $5 billion of capital across sectors including technology, software, media, healthcare IT, and business and information services. GS Growth seeks to partner with strong management teams to help companies achieve product, customer and geographic expansion. For more information about GS Growth, please visit: www.gs.com/gsgrowth.
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