Inside Kaseya’s Acquisition Of Inky: ‘This Is An Inflection Point For The Industry’

‘This isn’t just a product acquisition, it’s a mission to change the world again,’ says Dave Baggett, founder and CEO of Inky.

“Acquire and announce new email security.”

The simple six-word sentence was written in a black notebook: a goal Jim Lippie wrote down earlier this year.

“Back in April at Connect in Vegas, I talked about our commitment to delivering best-of-breed products within an integrated platform,” said Lippie, CTO of Miami-based Kaseya. “So we went on a mission to find a top-tier email security solution that we could bring to our customers quickly. The fastest way to do that was through acquisition.”

After evaluating “many players in the email security space,” the vendor announced its acquisition of Inky at its DattoCon conference in Miami this week.

For years, Kaseya offered email protection through its Graphus product, but partners made their expectations clear.

“We’ve heard consistently, time and time again, that Graphus wasn’t at the standard. It wasn’t best-of-breed email security,” Lippie said.

That partner feedback sparked a clear goal to deliver enterprise-grade email protection that fits within Kaseya’s integrated platform.

With Grapevine, Texas-based Inky, Kaseya’s ecosystem gains advanced generative AI, behavioral analysis and real-time user coaching working together to stop email-based threats before they reach users’ inboxes.

Thirty-nine Inky employees are coming over in the deal. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. According to data from PitchBook, Inky has raised a total of $29.4 million from heavyweight investors such as Blackstone and Insight Partners, giving it a valuation of $80 million.

“This isn’t just a product acquisition, it’s a mission to change the world again,” Dave Baggett, founder and CEO of Inky, said from the DattoCon stage. “This is an inflection point for the industry. We’ve always been on the leading edge of detection, but now it’s clear that the best protection requires data outside of the email itself, like login patterns and behavioral signals. That’s where Kaseya’s platform gives us a huge edge.”

Inky’s AI-based detection system combines natural language processing and now generative AI to combat phishing and impersonation attempts. The company recently rolled out its first generative AI detection engine which allows it to understand malicious content on a semantic level.

Kaseya’s global infrastructure opens new doors for Inky, said Baggett (pictured above), and enables tighter integration with endpoint, identity and behavioral data.

“We’ve built for simplicity, fewer clicks, smarter automation and end-user self-service that reduces ticket load,” he said. “This acquisition means we can take that even further, backed by Kaseya’s scale.”

Jonathan Snyder, service delivery manager for Wilmington, North Carolina-based CW IT Support, is already eager to see what the integration could mean for his clients.

“I can definitely see it helping our clients and being able to benefit them,” Snyder told CRN in an interview. “Right now, a lot of our stuff is just Microsoft Defender. Having something that’s got a little bit more security emphasis, with the AI integration behind it, will help identify threats faster than Microsoft’s built-in software.”