Immersive Labs, a platform which teaches cybersecurity skills to corporate employees by using real, up-to-date threat intelligence in a gamified way closed a $75m Series C funding round.
The round was led by new investors Insight Partners alongside Menlo Ventures, Citi Ventures and existing investor Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
The investment will be used to scale Immersive’s offering in the US and take advantage of the new wave of interest in cyber threats caused by so many people working remotely, post-pandemic.
Founded in 2017, Immersive Labs now has 200 people, with joint operations HQs in Bristol, UK and Boston, US. It plans to raise headcount to over 600 in the next two years and establish operations in new regions throughout APAC and Europe.
Immersive helps measure how a company would react to an attack and shows what the results may be if those actions are followed — all the way down to what a company’s stock price may be after that response. Immersive’s ‘Cyber Workforce Optimization’ platform claims to offer board-level metrics and benchmarking to gauge how the skills inside organisations are coping.
Immersive has now raised a total of $123m in venture funding and counts HSBC, Vodafone, and the NHS as customers. The company claimed it is growing at “over 100% year-on-year”.
Commenting on the round, Immersive Labs CEO James Hadley said, “With cyber risk becoming a problem for a growing number of business functions, cybersecurity knowledge and skills should no longer be the preserve of a few technical people hidden away in a back office. Everyone from the teams who build software, to the CEO, now need to play their part in addressing a pervasive company issue. This requires unlocking and evidencing skills in a much broader group of people.”
Echoing a similar sentiment, Insight Partners managing director Ryan Hinkle added, “With significant global customer and revenue growth over the last few years, Immersive Labs has established a strong position in the fast-developing cyber skills space. With influential leadership, an innovative product in a growing market, and strong user engagement, the company is in a position to continue to lead the cyber readiness market.”
Immersive Labs came out of the CYLON cyber accelerator, similar to Darktrace, has the same investors as Darktrace, but has in fact attracted $75m for its Series C, whereas Darktrace didn’t reach that level until Series D. Darktrace went public on the London Stock Exchange in April for £1.7bn.
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