10 Cool Tech Startups That Raised Funding In June 2020

Big-data and security innovators were among the startups that hauled in funding rounds in June.

Follow The Money

Even as economic uncertainty continues, venture capital investors are doubling down on funding for startups in critical areas such as big data and security. That was the theme in the VC funding landscape in June, where an array of companies with data-related innovations and novel approaches to cybersecurity scored new rounds--despite the ongoing economic woes deriving from the COVID-19 pandemic. Major rounds in the big-data sphere last month went to startups including Domino Data Lab, Fivetran, Sqream and Starburst Data. Meanwhile, up-and-coming security vendors that grabbed new investments in June included Area 1 Security and Salt Security.

What follows are our picks for 10 cool tech startups that landed new funding in June.

Area 1 Security

Headquarters: Redwood City, Calif.

CEO: Patrick Sweeney

Funding: $25 million

Investors: ForgePoint Capital (led the round), Kleiner Perkins, Icon Ventures, Top Tier Capital

What Area 1 Security does: Offers email security solutions that preemptively stop threats including Business Email Compromise, malware, ransomware and targeted phishing attacks

CEO Quote: “Email security is fundamentally broken, with phishing attacks consistently breaching defenses, leading to significant business losses for organizations large and small. The simple fact is that 95 percent of breaches begin with a phish disguised as an innocuous email. By focusing on the earliest stages of an attack combined with the industry‘s leading small pattern analytics technology, Area 1 is uniquely able to bring preemption to email security. We stop phishing campaigns prior to their inflicting damage.”

Cynet

Headquarters: New York

CEO: Eyal Gruner

Funding: $18 million

Investors: BlueRed Partners (led the round), Deutsche Telekom, Merlin International, Norwest Venture Partners, Ibex Investors

What Cynet does: Provides an autonomous breach protection platform that brings together monitoring and control, attack prevention and detection and response orchestration

CEO Quote: “Having this esteemed list of investors participating in Cynet‘s success is instrumental as we continue our evolution and enter the next phase of growth. This round of financing provides additional runway to execute further with our growing family of partners and customers, while aggressively expanding our footprint globally.”

Domino Data Lab

Headquarters: San Francisco

CEO: Nick Elprin

Funding: $43 million

Investors: Highland Capital Partners (led the round), Highland Europe, Dell Technologies Capital, Sequoia Capital, Coatue Management

What Domino Data Lab does: Offers a data science management platform for enhanced managing and scaling of data science in the enterprise

CEO Quote: “As the world’s most sophisticated companies are increasingly investing in data science as a competitive advantage, it’s clear they need new capabilities to manage their models and scale their research. We’re proud that our new product capabilities are helping companies like Bristol-Myers Squibb, Lockheed Martin, and Bayer to accelerate research, deploy models, and now monitor those models at scale. And this latest funding will let us accelerate development of more innovative products for our customers.”

Element

Headquarters: San Francisco

CEO: Andy Bane

Funding: $18 million, Series B

Investors: Activate Capital and Forte Ventures (led the round), Evonik Venture Capital, Kerogen Digital Solutions, High Tide Foundation, Kleiner Perkins Green Growth Fund, Ajax Strategies, Blue Bear Capital, Schneider Electric Ventures, Honeywell Ventures, ABB Technology Ventures

What Element does: Provides a hub for industrial organization data, which automates data preparation to help improve operational performance

CEO Quote: “This financing is the latest example of Element’s momentum on multiple fronts. We welcome our new investors who work at the confluence of enterprise SaaS and industrial transformation. The funding will help Element achieve the next level of performance on behalf of our customers who are solving their most challenging problems through data.”

Fivetran

Headquarters: Oakland, Calif.

CEO: George Fraser

Funding: $100 million, Series C

Investors: Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst (led the round), CEAS Investments, Matrix Partners

What Fivetran does: Provider of automated data integration, which centralizes data for analysis without wasting engineering resources

CEO Quote: “From the start, our vision has been to make access to data as simple and reliable as electricity. Besides conducting back-channel calls with customers as part of their fundraising due diligence, every investor cited our Glassdoor reviews and the unique culture we‘ve created at Fivetran. That culture has enabled us to execute consistently since the beginning and is critical as we continue to pull away from the pack in our pursuit to connect every data source and make them all work perfectly.”

Immuta

Headquarters: Boston

CEO: Matthew Carroll

Funding: $40 million, Series C

Investors: Intel Capital (led the round), Ten Eleven Ventures, DFJ Growth, Dell Technologies Capital, Greycroft, Drive Capital, Citi Ventures

What Immuta does: Offers an automated data governance platform that enables self-service access to and control of sensitive data

CEO Quote: “With each passing quarter, we’re seeing accelerating demand from data-driven leaders that need to automate how data is accessed, shared and analyzed so they remain compliant with an ever-growing set of regulations, and to avoid costly breaches or data leaks. The investment we’re announcing today from Intel Capital and Ten Eleven, along with our existing investors, will help us accelerate platform innovation, enhance and expand our strategic partnerships, and bring to market new, industry-specific solutions to automate compliance with HIPAA, CCPA, COPPA and other regulations.”

Salt Security

Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.

CEO: Roey Eliyahu

Funding: $20 million, Series A

Investors: Tenaya Capital (led the round), Haim Sadger, Aya Peterburg, Marius Nacht, René Bonvanie

What Salt Security does: Provides an API security platform that uses behavioral protection to prevent advanced API attacks

CEO Quote: “Salt Security prevents attacks that are impossible to detect with traditional security point-products. We are the only vendor in the space that can protect against all threats listed on the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) API Security Top 10 in addition to other increasing API-related security risks. Our expanding customer base is firmly focused on driving digital transformation, and our solution enables them to innovate and confidently secure the APIs driving critical technological advancements for their business.”

Sqream

Headquarters: New York

CEO: Ami Gal

Funding: $39.4 million

Investors: Mangrove Capital Partners and Schusterman Family Investments (led the round), Hanaco Venture Capital, Sistema VC, World Trade Center Ventures, Blumberg Capital, Silvertech Ventures, Alibaba Group

What Sqream does: Offers SQream DB, a GPU database that serves as a data analytics acceleration platform and is capable of analyzing up to petabytes of raw data from Hadoop or other data warehouse and database systems

CEO Quote: “From the very beginning, our vision has been to enable enterprises to analyze more of their data much faster, providing better, more accurate and comprehensive business insights. We have made our vision a reality by continuously improving our product, and by investing in top developers who enjoy the challenge and motivation of deep tech product innovation.”

Starburst Data

Headquarters: Boston

CEO: Justin Borgman

Funding: $42 million, Series B

Investors: Coatue (led the round), Index Ventures

What Starburst Data does: Offers a free distribution of the open-source Presto distributed SQL query engine, and also markets Starburst Enterprise Presto, a commercial edition with added management capabilities, security, pre-built connectors to data sources and support services

CEO Quote: “Companies are tired of technology investments that don’t deliver. In the data management world, technologies are often too expensive, lock in data, and don’t deliver on the speed companies need to make better business decisions. We’re at a moment in time where companies need to act quickly on data, while lowering technology costs wherever they can. As an open source analytics company, Starburst is well-positioned to help them do both.”

Zerto

Headquarters: Boston

CEO: Ziv Kedem

Funding: $33 million

Investors: Claltech, 83North, Battery Ventures, Harmony Partners, IVP, Pitango Venture Capital, RTP Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners, Poalim Capital Markets

What Zerto does: Provides all-in-one disaster recovery, data protection and workload mobility software as part of its IT Resilience Platform for on-premises and cloud systems

CEO Quote: “This investment further validates our vision and direction as innovative leaders in the IT Resilience market. It‘s gratifying to receive long-term commitments from our existing investors, and to add a new important investor to our roster: Poalim Capital Markets. This is another milestone for the business and allows us to confidently push forward with our plans to provide customers with a solution for their next generation business realities.”