10 Cool Tech Companies That Raised Funding In June 2021

Next-generation cybersecurity, big data and machine learning technology developers were among the companies that reported new rounds of funding in June.

Follow The Money

Startups pushing technology boundaries in cybersecurity, machine learning, and big data management and analytics were among the companies that attracted new venture financing in June.

Transmit Security, a developer of passwordless identity and access management technology, topped this month’s list with a $543 million funding infusion. Cybersecurity startups Illumio and Exabeam reported impressive funding rounds as did big data startups Alation and Imply.

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

Transmit Security

Headquarters: Boston and Tel Aviv, Israel

CEO: Mickey Boodaei

Funding: The $543 million Series A round of funding established Transmit Security’s pre-money valuation at $2.2 billion.

Investors: The funding round was led by Insight Partners and General Atlantic with additional investment from Cyberstarts, Geodesic, SYN Ventures, Vintage, and Artisanal Ventures

What company does: Transmit Security develops passwordless identity and access management software.

CEO Quote: “Passwordless authentication is so much more than ensuring customers can easily and seamlessly access their information, their accounts and make purchases - it’s about revolutionizing the way companies interact with their customers. By eliminating passwords, businesses can immediately reduce churn and cart abandonment and provide superior security for personal data.”

Illumio

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.

CEO: Andrew Rubin

Funding: The $225 million Series F round of funding put Illumio’s pre-money valuation at $2.75 billion.

Investors: The round was led by Thoma Bravo and supported by Franklin Templeton, funds managed by Hamilton Lane, and Owl Rock, a division of Blue Owl Capital.

What company does: Illumio’s zero trust segmentation technology stops cyberattacks and ransomware from spreading to applications, clouds, containers, data centers and endpoints.

CEO Quote: “Adopting Zero Trust strategies has never been more important for organizations across all industries, as the Biden Administration’s recent cybersecurity Executive Order demonstrates. This investment signals that now is the time to reimagine the cybersecurity model as we know it, with Zero Trust Segmentation playing a fundamental role in this strategic shift.”

Exabeam

Headquarters: Foster City, Calif.

CEO: Michael DeCesare

Funding: The $200 million Series F round of funding put Exabeam’s pre-money valuation at $2.4 billion.

Investors: The round was led by the Owl Rock division of Blue Owl Capital and supported by existing investors Acrew Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Norwest Venture Partners.

What company does: Exabeam’s cybersecurity analytics and automation technology is used in threat detection, investigation and response.

CEO Quote: “Innovation is in our DNA. We are reimagining the threat detection, investigation and response problem with an open, extended detection and response, offering automation and use case-specific content so security analysts can quickly defend against threats, which is a true game changer for security teams.”

Amplitude

Headquarters: San Francisco

CEO: Spenser Skates

Funding: The $150 million Series F round of funding brings the company’s total financing to $336 million and puts its pre-money valuation at $4 billion.

Investors: The funding round was led by Sequoia Capital with participation from other existing investors GIC, Battery Ventures and IVP.

What company does: Amplitude markets a digital optimization system for analyzing digital product, customer and sales data.

CEO Quote: “Our latest funding round speaks directly to digital innovation as the new competitive frontier, and the central role Amplitude plays in the new digital economy.”

Claroty

Headquarters: New York

CEO: Yaniv Vardi

Funding: The $140 million Series D round of funding brings the company’s total financing to $235 million and is likely the company’s last funding round before going public.

Investors: The round was co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners’ Century II fund and 40 North, the investment arm of New York-based global industrial company Standard Industries. Additional strategic investors included Korea-based LG and I Squared Capital’s ISQ Global InfraTech Fund. All previous investors also joined the round including Temasek, Team8, and long-time customers and partners Rockwell Automation, Siemens and Schneider Electric.

What company does: Claroty develops cybersecurity technology focused on the industrial side of businesses in manufacturing, automotive, life sciences, and food and beverage industries. The technology is used to secure operating technology, IoT and industrial IoT assets.

CEO Quote: “The industrial economy is going through digital transformation to become more productive. They are taking legacy systems, which were likely air-gapped, and connecting them.”

Firebolt

Headquarters: Tel Aviv, Israel

CEO: Eldad Farkash

Funding: The $127 million Series B funding round brings the company’s total financing to $164 million.

Investors: Participating in the latest funding round are new investors Dawn Capital and K5 Global, while all investors from the first round also joined including Zeev Ventures, TLV Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Angular Ventures.

What company does: Firebolt offers a cloud data warehouse system for businesses and organizations that are building data-intensive applications and interactive analytical systems in the cloud – for both internal and external users – that tap into huge volumes of data.

CEO Quote: “Data serving at scale, given what companies are trying to build with data today, requires a whole new way of thinking on the tech[nology], on architecture, the pricing model – almost everything.”

Alation

Headquarters: Redwood City, Calif.

CEO: Satyen Sangani

Funding: The $110 million Series D funding round brings the company’s total financing to $217 million and boosts its market valuation to $1.2 billion.

Investors: The funding round was led by Riverwood Capital and included participation from new investors Sanabil Investments and Snowflake Ventures and existing investors Costanoa Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, Icon Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Sapphire Ventures and Union Grove Partners.

What company does: Alation develops data catalog software and tools for data governance and data search and discovery – all under the “data intelligence” description – that businesses and organizations use to identify and manage data assets for business intelligence, AI and machine learning tasks, and for meeting data regulatory and governance requirements.

CEO Quote: “We just think we have such a massive market opportunity in building out the data intelligence category and realizing its full vision and capability. There are so many different elements of data – the complexities with data and making it really, really simple is something we could spend the next 20 years on and still have work to do.”

Versa Networks

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

CEO: Kelly Ahuja

Funding: The $84 million in Series D round of funding brings the company’s total financing to $196 million.

Investors: The funding round was co-led by Princeville Capital and RPS Ventures, with additional participation from existing investors, including Sequoia Capital.

What company does: A leader in the SD-WAN networking space, Versa Networks has been expanding into the SASE (Secure Access Serve Edge) technology space.

CEO Quote: “SASE is the fastest-growing category in networking and security. We’re growing faster than the market and the competition, and we’re delivering results.”

Imply

Headquarters: Burlingame, Calif.

CEO: Fangjin Yang

Funding: The $70 million Series C funding round brought the company’s total financing to $116 million and boosted its pre-money valuation to $700 million.

Investors: The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from Tiger Global Management. Existing investors A16Z, Khosla Ventures and Geodesic Capital also participated.

What company does: Imply, which calls itself the pioneer of “analytics-in motion,” develops a multi-cloud, real-time data analytics platform for building analytics-driven applications. The software is powered by the open-source Apache Druid real-time analytics database that was developed by Imply’s founders.

CEO Quote: “In the modern world, what worked yesterday often doesn’t work today. Analytics-in-motion will power the next frontier of digital transformation – the movement away from analytics solutions that are expensive, slow and static towards analytics solutions that are highly scalable, cost effective and enable customers to quickly get to the ‘a-ha’ moment.”

Iterative

Headquarters: San Francisco

CEO: Dmitry Petrov

Funding: The $20 million Series A financing round brought the company’s total financing to $25 million.

Investors: The round was led by 468 Capital and Florian Leibert, founder of infrastructure startup Mesosphere. Participating in the round were prior investors True Ventures and Afore Capital.

What company does: Iterative has developed a machine learning operations platform, DVC Studio, designed to streamline workflows for data scientists and machine learning engineers.

CEO Quote: “DVC Studio enables machine learning developers to run hundreds of experiments with full transparency, giving other developers in the organization the ability to collaborate fully in the process. The funding today will help us bring more innovative products and services into our ecosystem.”