Carbon Black Privately Files For IPO

Carbon Black Inc., an anti-virus software manufacturer, filed privately for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to the Wall Street Journal.

At the time of the firm’s most recent round of venture funding, it was valued at $600 million. Companies will less than $1 billion in revenue can file privately with the SEC under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012.

Carbon Black, previously Bit9, was founded over 10 years ago and has raised a total of $174.5 million. After a round of funding in 2007, the firm was recapitalized and, in 2010, the preferred shares were converted to common stock, according to PitchBook. The firms then rebounded, and its valuation soared after a series of equity rounds.

Lead investors are Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan Chase, but representatives did not comment on the news. According to The Wall Street Journal, technology company IPOs are beginning to heat up again after a period of dearth in investment activity.

Other technology-related investment news includes the shares of Nutanix Inc., a software company that provides data storage and computing combined in one box. The company’s shares soared 131 percent on their first day of trading on Nasdaq. The larger investors of Carbon Black’s include Accomplice, .406 Ventures and Sequoia Capital.

Recent breaches, such as those experienced by Yahoo, highlight security as an increasing problem for large corporations. Employee use of mobile devices to access corporate networks and cloud computing are contributing to the vulnerability of data as firewalls are no longer sufficient.

While hacker techniques, such as phishing, are growing in sophistication and perpetrators are able to break into networks pretending to be credentialed users, firms like Carbon Black are attempting to seek out hacker activity on corporate networks.

Secure systems and technology are expected to cost corporations over $29 billion this year, according to Barclays analysts in a July report.