SoftBank Backs Cybersecurity Firm’s $59M Round

Japanese company SoftBank Group Corp., is backing cybersecurity startup Cybereason with $50 million in Series C funding.

The funding, which was also backed by Cybereason’s existing investors CRV and Spark Capital and totaled $59 million, will be directed at launching the Tel Aviv, Israel-based company in Japan, according to a company blog post.

“Our deployment of the Cybereason platform internally gave us firsthand knowledge of the value it provides and led to our decision to invest. I’m confident Cybereason and SoftBank’s new product offering will bring a new level of security to Japanese organizations,” said Ken Miyauchi, president and CEO of SoftBank.

The latest round of investment comes after U.S. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin invested $25 million in the company in May, raising its total investment value to $84 million.

“We built our relationship with SoftBank to mirror the success we achieved with Lockheed Martin, which also invested in and built a joint go-to-market plan with us,” said Lior Div, CEO and cofounder of Cybereason. “This model enables us to maintain our agility and focus on innovation while leveraging the credibility, resources and experience that only industry giants bring to the table.”

The multiple investments in Cybereason reflect upon the wide international attention Israeli cybersecurity startups have been getting lately. For instance, Israeli startup Cyactive, which is funded by Jerusalem Venture Partners, caught Chinese eCommerce giant Alibaba‘s attention, resulting in $15 million in funding from the company. Earlier this year, another IT security startup called Visualead, which develops QR codes, got under $10 million in investment from Alibaba.

In other major investments, Israeli cloud security company Adallom was bought by Microsoft for $320 million, and security company CyberArk shelled off $30.5 million to acquire Viewfinity.

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