Semperis enters unicorn club with $125 million round at over $1 billion valuation
Semperis enters unicorn club with $125 million round at over $1 billion valuation
The cyber company also named a new CFO, CRO and CLO as it continues to gear up for a potential IPO
Israeli cybersecurity company Semperis announced on Thursday that it has raised $125 million in funding from J. P. Morgan and Hercules Capital at a valuation of over $1 billion. Semperis raised a $200 million Series C two years ago.
Unlike two years ago, the latest round includes equity and debt. In addition to the funding, Semperis also announced the appointment of Jeff Bray as CFO, Mike DeGaetano as chief revenue officer, and Annabel Lewis as chief legal officer and corporate secretary, as it continues to gear up for a future IPO.
Semperis, which is headquartered in Hoboken, New Jersey, was founded in 2013 by CEO Michael Brezman, Chief Technology Officer Guy Teverovsky, and Matan Liberman, who serves as executive vice president of business development and leads the company’s Tel Aviv branch.
The company provides identity security solutions for hybrid Active Directory users, with a focus on Microsoft's Active Directory - a directory service widely used by Fortune 500 companies across industries. The company's disaster recovery system knows how to detect cyber attacks, neutralize them, and restore the organization's activities automatically.
Speaking to Calcalist after being selected as the most promising Israeli startup of 2023, Matan Liberman explained how the company did not follow the typical path of Israeli cyber entrepreneurs, which includes starting in one of the army’s technology units of the intelligence corps, creating an extensive network of connections, receiving investments from senior angel investors in the industry, and a supportive business environment. "We are a strange bird: we weren’t in the IDF’s technology units," said Lieberman. "Mickey was in the Navy, I served in the Prime Minister's Office, Guy was in infantry, and we both served as reservists in infantry.
"Guy worked as a consultant for Microsoft, going to organizations around the world to help them prepare for disasters in the world of corporate security. One of these organizations was the Prime Minister's Office, where I worked as the head of a development team. As part of the joint work, he told me about the difficulties in recovering systems after a disaster, and about the lack of awareness that organizations have about this. One of the organizations he met with was a bank that didn't even know it couldn't recover its systems.
"Micky [Brezman], who was a good friend of Guy's, had a company that engaged in recovery consulting. They spoke and came to the conclusion that the situation in this market will get worse and worse, and decided to start a company that would develop technology for rapid recovery from a disaster. They approached me to be a co-founder, we were accepted to Microsoft's accelerator program, and the rest is history."
