Failed Cybersecurity Startups
69 venture-backed cybersecurity startups have shut down after raising $4.9B combined — about 3% of the entire graveyard. The biggest cohort last raised in 2022, and the most common final round was Seed.
Cybersecurity rode one of the most crowded funding waves of 2021 — hundreds of vendors selling adjacent acronyms into the same CISO budget. Consolidation and down rounds followed; the ones that could not be acquired shut down.
The Damage, by the Numbers
$10.0M
Median raised before shutdown
$70.7M
Average raised — the big flameouts drag it up
8
Died holding $100M+ in funding
2
Raised $1B+ and still closed
Class of the crash
Closed cybersecurity startups by year of their final funding round
19
23
16
7
2021
$803.3M
2022
$2.3B
2023
$286.5M
2024
$279.8M
How far they got
Last round raised before shutting down
Pre-Seed
7
Seed
22
Series A
11
Series B
7
Series C+
4
Debt & Notes
3
Other
15
Based on the last five years of fundraising data tracked in the VCbacked database.
The Graveyard
Showing 100 of 69 closed startups
Company | Raised | Last Round | What They Did | Location | Founders | Site | Contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lacework | $1.9B | Venture | Lacework is a cloud security services provider that automates cloud security at scale so customers can innovate with speed and safety. | Mountain View, California, United States | Mike Speiser | Reveal | |
Odata Brasil | $1.1B | Debt | Odata Brasil the most modern data center infrastructure in Latin America. | São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil | — | Reveal | |
AMD Pensando | $313.0M | Series C | Pensando is a developer of new edge services and programmable processors for enterprise and cloud computing. | Milpitas, California, United States | Soni Jiandani | Reveal | |
Noname Security | $220.0M | Series C | Noname Security develops software that protects organizations by identifying vulnerabilities and defending against attacks in API systems. | Palo Alto, California, United States | Oz Golan | Reveal | |
Dazz | $110.0M | Venture | Dazz delivers unified security remediation across code, clouds, infrastructure, and applications for security and development teams. | Palo Alto, California, United States | Merav Bahat, Tomer Schwartz, Yuval Ofir | Reveal | |
Protect AI | $108.5M | Series B | Protect AI is a cybersecurity company that helps in managing security risks and defending against AI security threats. | Seattle, Washington, United States | Badar Ahmed, Daryan (D) Dehghanpisheh, Ian Swanson | Reveal | |
Balbix | $101.6M | Series C | Balbix offers an AI-native cyber risk and exposure management platform to give security teams a real-time view of their attack surface. | San Jose, California, United States | Gaurav Banga | Reveal | |
Adlumin | $101.3M | Series B | Adlumin provides an enterprise-grade security operations platform to detect cyber threats and keep mid-market organizations secure. | Burlington, Massachusetts, United States | Robert Johnston | Reveal | |
Aware | $87.0M | Series C | Aware is an AI solution that analyzes human behavior and provides modern governance, risk, and compliance controls. | Columbus, Ohio, United States | James Tsai | Reveal | |
Nok Nok Labs | $70.4M | Venture | Nok Nok Labs is a security platform that provides online authentication solutions for organizations. | Palo Alto, California, United States | Ramesh Kesanupalli | Reveal | |
Penten | $53.1M | PE | Penten helps the digital transformation of defence & government - creating, building & operating new cyber tech for the modern workforce. | Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia | Ben Whitham | Reveal | |
SafeBase | $53.1M | Series B | SafeBase is a trust center platform for friction-free security reviews changing how companies communicate their security and trust posture. | San Francisco, California, United States | Adar Arnon, Al Yang, Stan Chang | Reveal | |
ThreatX | $51.6M | Series B | ThreatX is a web application and API protection platform that enables enterprises to secure all their applications. | Boston, Massachusetts, United States | Andrew Useckas | Reveal | |
Netography | $47.6M | Series A | Cloud-Native Network Defense Platform for All Your Cloud and On-Prem Traffic | Annapolis, Maryland, United States | Barrett Lyon | Reveal | |
Armorblox | $46.5M | Venture | Armorblox uses deep learning and natural language technologies to protect enterprise communications. | Sunnyvale, California, United States | Anand Raghavan | Reveal | |
CalypsoAI | $43.2M | Venture | CalypsoAI is an AI security platform that provides agentic red-teaming, real-time defense, and automated security enforcement. | Washington, District of Columbia, United States | Davey Gibian | Reveal | |
SlashNext | $40.5M | Series B | SlashNext is a computer and network security company that specializes in cybersecurity, cyber-attack detection, and IT solutions. | Pleasanton, California, United States | Atif Mushtaq | Reveal | |
ActZero.ai | $40.0M | Series A | ActZero provides AI-driven managed detection and response for cybersecurity. | Menlo Park, California, United States | John Nurczynski | Reveal | |
Open Raven | $39.1M | Series B | Open Raven is the data security posture management company that prevents leaks, breaches, and compliance incidents. | Los Angeles, California, United States | Dave Cole | Reveal | |
Cado Security | $31.5M | Series B | Cado Security provides the cloud investigation platform that empowers security teams to respond to threats at cloud speed. | London, England, United Kingdom | Christopher Doman, James Campbell | Reveal | |
Votiro | $25.5M | Series A | Votiro is a cybersecurity company that offers a data security platform to protect organizations from digital threats. | Austin, Texas, United States | Aviv Grafi, Itay Glick | Reveal | |
Dasera | $21.0M | Series A | Dasera is a DSPM platform that automates data security and governance controls to minimize risk across your data lifecycle. | Mountain View, California, United States | Ani Chaudhuri, David McCaw, Noah Johnson | Reveal | |
Phylum | $19.5M | Series A | Phylum defends applications at the perimeter of the open-source ecosystem and the tools used to build software. | Evergreen, Colorado, United States | Aaron Bray | Reveal | |
Elevate Security | $18.3M | Venture | Elevate Security is a developer of a security risk management platform that prevents account takeover and data loss. | Berkeley, California, United States | Masha Sedova | Reveal | |
Borneo | $18.0M | Series A | Borneo is a data security platform that helps companies to prevent sensitive data misuse, stop data leaks, and drive privacy compliance. | Singapore, Central Region, Singapore | Prithvi Rai | Reveal | |
SynSaber | $15.5M | Series A | SynSaber is the vendor-agnostic asset & network monitoring software bringing edge visibility to critical infrastructure. | Chandler, Arizona, United States | Jori VanAntwerp | Reveal | |
Noetic Cyber | $15.0M | Venture | Noetic Cyber is a cloud continuous cyber asset management and controls platform provider. | Waltham, Massachusetts, United States | Allen Hadden | Reveal | |
Inpher.io | $14.0M | Venture | Inpher.io is a secret computing technology for privacy-preserving machine learning and AI. | New York, New York, United States | Dimitar Jetchev | Reveal | |
oak9 | $13.9M | Venture | oak9 is a cybersecurity SaaS Platform for Developers. | Chicago, Illinois, United States | Aakash Shah | Reveal | |
Rezonate | $13.7M | Seed | Rezonate provides an identity security platform for monitoring and compliance. | Boston, Massachusetts, United States | Ori Amiga, Roy Akerman | Reveal | |
Blackwell Security | $13.0M | Program | Blackwell Security offers managed security operations for healthcare organizations to deliver complete protection and rapid response. | Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States | Jaclyn Miller | Reveal | |
Silk Security | $12.5M | Seed | Silk Security provides tools that consolidate and prioritize security findings to streamline the remediation process for organizations. | New York, New York, United States | Bar Katz, Or Priel, Yoav Nathaniel | Reveal | |
Nethone | $10.6M | Series A | Know Your Users™ to reject only fraudsters | Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland | Kacper Szcześniak | Reveal | |
Longbow | $10.5M | Seed | Longbow's SaaS platform enables companies to identify the Best Next Actions to reduce the most application and cloud risk. | Austin, Texas, United States | Dayne Myers, Derek Maki | Reveal | |
Dellfer | $10.0M | Series A | Dellfer is an IoT and automotive cybersecurity startup that provides tools for devops to add endpoint protection. | San Mateo, California, United States | James Blaisdell | Reveal | |
Effectiv | $9.6M | Seed | Effectiv is a real-time fraud and risk decisioning platform for financial institutions and fintechs. | San Francisco, California, United States | Anupam Tarsauliya, Jonathan Doering, Ravi Sandepudi, Ritesh Arora | Reveal | |
Hubble | $9.0M | Seed | Hubble is an award winning, fully agentless, technology asset visibility and cybersecurity posture management solution. | Reston, Virginia, United States | Tom Parker | Reveal | |
Strong Network | $6.4M | Seed | Strong Network is a a business unit of cloud software group that delivers a self-hosted platform to manage the first secure CDEs. | Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland | Laurent Balmelli | Reveal | |
DeepSurface Security Inc | $5.7M | Seed | The first risk-based vulnerability management platform that automates the process of analyzing and prioritizing vulnerabilities. | Portland, Oregon, United States | James Dirksen | Reveal | |
Kivera | $5.4M | Seed | Kivera is the next generation of cloud compliance tooling providing deep visibility and protection across your cloud deployments. | New York, New York, United States | Jonathan Spinks, Neil Brown, Vernon Jefferson | Reveal | |
Dassana | $5.0M | Seed | Dassana is on a mission to harness the power of data-driven insights to transform security control effectiveness. | San Mateo, California, United States | Gaurav Kumar | Reveal | |
Trustpage | $5.0M | Seed | Trustpage is a software tool that provides reviews, questionnaires, directory, document sharing, roadmap, and knowledge base solutions. | Royal Oak, Michigan, United States | Chase Lee | Reveal | |
CyberQ | $5.0M | Seed | CyberQ is a cybersecurity technology company specializing in advanced threat detection and prevention solutions. | Lowell, Massachusetts, United States | Dan Rasmussen | Reveal | |
Sweepatic | $4.4M | Series A | Sweepatic is an external attack surface management (EASM) company that helps customers become cyber resilient. | Leuven, Vlaams-Brabant, Belgium | Stijn Vande Casteele | Reveal | |
BreachQuest | $4.4M | Program | BreachQuest is reimagining incident response with the goal of minimizing downtime and driving down breach cost. | Dallas, Texas, United States | Shaun Gordon | Reveal | |
ThreatKey | $4.0M | Seed | ThreatKey provides security solutions for SaaS and Cloud applications. | New York, New York, United States | Carlos Beltran | Reveal | |
Raito | $4.0M | Program | Data Access Management for the Modern Data Team | Brussels, Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest, Belgium | Bart Vandekerckhove | Reveal | |
Alpin | $4.0M | Seed | Alpin is SaaS management: a single dashboard to discover Shadow IT, cut costs up to 30%, monitor activity and improve security. | Boulder, Colorado, United States | Benjamin Soulier | Reveal | |
EGIDE | $3.5M | Venture | EGIDE is an IT consulting company that offers IoT and authentication technology services. | Singapore, Central Region, Singapore | Kok Leong Toh | Reveal | |
ByteChek | $3.1M | Seed | ByteChek helps businesses build cybersecurity programs to enhance sales and build trust from customers. | Miami, Florida, United States | AJ Yawn | Reveal | |
Muninn | $2.5M | Seed | Muninn is AI technology that empower companies to protect their critical digital assets and infrastructures from cyber-criminals. | Copenhagen, Hovedstaden, Denmark | Andreas Frederik Wehowsky | Reveal | |
DuckPond Technologies | $2.5M | Seed | DuckPond Technologies focuses on innovative products that improve the quality of life for consumers across payment network industries. | Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States | Dartanyon Williams | Reveal | |
BoxyHQ | $2.5M | Seed | Security building blocks for the AI era, helping companies prioritize AI security and deploy compliant cloud applications faster. | London, England, United Kingdom | Carlos Samame | Reveal | |
4Securitas | $2.4M | Series A | Data centric cybersecurity for Enterprise. | Dublin, Dublin, Ireland | Donal Kerr | Reveal | |
OptyFi | $2.4M | Seed | OptyFi is a decentralized finance (DeFi) asset optimizer. | Toronto, Ontario, Canada | — | Reveal | |
Staging Labs | $2.2M | Pre-Seed | Staging Labs making crypto safe and easy to use. | Miami, Florida, United States | — | Reveal | |
Bleach Cyber | $2.0M | Pre-Seed | Bleach is a cybersecurity platform helps small and medium businesses get secure by leveraging the security in their existing investments. | Austin, Texas, United States | Craig Goodwin | Reveal | |
AnchorID,Inc. | $1.6M | Debt | Enterprise mobile autentication | Kingston, New York, United States | David W. Schropfer | Reveal | |
Parablu | $1.5M | Seed | Parablu is a leading provider of data security and resiliency solutions for the digital enterprise. BluVault a secure data backup solutions | Fremont, California, United States | Anand Prahlad | Reveal | |
EarthFast | $1.4M | Pre-Seed | EarthFast is a blockchain service provider that offers secured crypto front-end hosting solutions. | Grand Cayman, Midland, Cayman Islands | Dheeraj Manjunath | Reveal | |
Cyberjobs | $915K | Seed | Cyberjobs is a cybersecurity recruitment company. | Paris, Ile-de-France, France | David Berenfus | Reveal | |
Cufflink.io | $864K | Program | Cyber Security Software as a Service | Gaerwen, Isle of Anglesey, United Kingdom | BIlly Williams | Reveal | |
Elysium Lab | $720K | Pre-Seed | Elysium Lab develops resilient technology to power the future of authentication, encryption, and digital asset management. | Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland | Aron Clementi, Gianmarco Guazzo | Reveal | |
Awen Collective Ltd | $523K | Seed | Awen is a software company making society safer by increasing cyber resilience in our critical national infrastructures and manufacturers | Cardiff, Cardiff, United Kingdom | Andrew Blyth | Reveal | |
Maltiverse | $500K | Pre-Seed | Helping organizations to adopt Threat Intelligence | Madrid, Madrid, Spain | Antonio Gomez | Reveal | |
Foretrace | $500K | Seed | Foretrace’s patent-pending Total Recon™ Threat Exposure Management engine detects data exposure and alerts you before it results in breaches | Columbia, Maryland, United States | Nick Ascoli | Reveal | |
ForceField IO | $400K | Pre-Seed | Patent-pending APIs for verification & real-time detection of fraud, spoofing, deepfakes, cyber attacks for any type of streaming media. | Red Bank, New Jersey, United States | Stealth Co-Founder | Reveal | |
Threat Jammer | $331K | Pre-Seed | Risk scoring service from curated threat intelligence data. | Madrid, Madrid, Spain | Diego Parrilla | Reveal | |
Narya Security | $250K | Note | Narya Security helps enterprises solve the damage from Ransomware infections, with a single click. | Saint Louis, Missouri, United States | Uri Fleyder-Kotler | Reveal |
More From the Graveyard
Frequently Asked Questions
How many cybersecurity startups have failed?
The VCbacked Startup Graveyard currently tracks 69 venture-backed cybersecurity startups that have shut down, collectively raising $4.9B before closing. That is roughly 3 percent of all closed companies in the database, which is based on the last five years of fundraising data.
What is the biggest cybersecurity startup failure?
By total capital raised, the largest cybersecurity failure in the database is Lacework, which raised $1.9B before shutting down.
Why do cybersecurity startups fail?
Cybersecurity rode one of the most crowded funding waves of 2021 — hundreds of vendors selling adjacent acronyms into the same CISO budget. Consolidation and down rounds followed; the ones that could not be acquired shut down. Across the dataset, the most common last round before shutdown in cybersecurity was Seed, and the largest cohort of failures last raised in 2022.
Can I contact founders of failed cybersecurity startups?
Founder names are shown free on this page for every closed cybersecurity company. VCbacked paid plans reveal verified founder contact details where available and unlock CSV export.