Darktrace Moves Towards A Massive IPO

The British cyber security global leader Darktrace is working towards an IPO next year after growing its market capitalisation to more than $2 billion. Darktrace has grown impressively and consistently under the dual transatlantic CEO leaership of Poppy Gustafsson in Cambridge, England and Nicole Eagan in the US.

Analysists say that if not for the coronavirus, Darktrace would have already launched its IPO. Management are thought to be keen to proceed with the IPO sooner rather than later and are just waiting for a window of opportunity. 

The company applies artificial intelligence and machine learning to spot cyber-threat patterns at early stages, and defend against them in the process. Its cyber-solution seems to be doing really well, with $500 million in contracts secured by the company to date

The company has grown revenues in a very successful past year and has so far raised around $250 million and now employs around 1,000 people globally. The number of customers using Darktrace’s AI email solution, Antigena Email, has doubled since January 2020, while the number of requests to trial Antigena Email has quadrupled since the lockdown began in early March.

Darktrace was founded in 2013 by mathematicians from the University of Cambridge alongside cyber intelligence experts in the US and the UK. 

The company applies artificial intelligence and machine learning to spot cyber-threat patterns at early stages, and defend against them in the process. Its cyber-solution seems to be doing really well, with $500 million in contracts secured by the company so far, according to its website.

Darktrace revealed that in the month of April 60%   of all advanced spear-phishing attacks blocked by its Antigena Email service, either related to COVID-19 or aimed to trick employees by referencing remote working. 

Attackers are exploiting concerns about the virus to convince people to open emails and click on malicious links in a trend called ‘fearware’, using over 130,000 newly-created email domains related to coronavirus to bypass standard spam filters.
Antigena Email’s ability to distinguish malicious emails from legitimate business communications, and stop those emails from ever reaching the employee’s inbox, has never been more critical. 

Powered by cyber AI, the technology works by forming an evolving understanding of ‘normal activity’ for corporate email environments and the individual users within them.

This enables it to detect incoming novel and targeted attacks that traditional tools let through, including domain spoofing, supply chain account takeovers, and impersonation attempts.Darktrace has stopped numerous instances of ‘fearware’ across its customer base, including attackers posing as the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organisation and, more recently, attackers spoofing company email addresses to deliver false corporate updates. 

Mike Lynch, the Cambridge technology entrepreneur, has backed Darktrace since inception and the Invoke Capital fund he founded also has high hopes for stablemate Luminance which is massively commercialising its AI platform for the legal profession. The feeling within Invoke is that lawyers will have to work overtime when the initial phase of the COVID-19 crisis is over and a lot of interest has already been expressed by global law firms as to how Luminance’s AI expertise can help with a projected surge in workload.

Darktrace has grown rapidly to join an exceptional group of cyber security technology vendors with market valuations in excess of $1 billion - termed 'Unicorns' by the investment industry. 

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