A late-stage fundraising round of $100 million has been received by Nozomi Networks Inc., a startup that assists businesses in securing their factory robots and other connected equipment.
The Series E round was disclosed today by the software developer. Two significant producers of industrial equipment, Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and Schneider Electric SE, were among the investors who contributed the funds. With this round, Nozomi has received over $260 million in outside capital altogether.
At the time of the financing, the business revealed that since 2021, the recurring revenue from its core product, the cloud platform Vantage, has increased fivefold annually. According to Nozomi Networks, it currently aids in the global protection of over 105 million devices. These gadgets include cranes, elevators, and robotic arms used in factories.
“This investment clearly underscores the need and support for OEM-agnostic security solutions in light of today’s escalating attacks against critical infrastructure around the world,” said Nozomi Chief Executive Officer Edgard Capdevielle.
Developed by the business, the Vantage platform made its debut in 2021 and has the ability to map out and scan all connected devices utilized by an organization automatically for vulnerabilities. For example, the platform may determine whether a machine is running an out-of-date version of Linux that has a known security vulnerability. Vantage helps administrators address the most critical issues first by prioritizing the vulnerabilities it finds based on the related breach risk.
Three primary sources are used by the platform to gather information regarding security-related topics. First, businesses can install the lightweight Arc agent directly on connected devices to collect vulnerability data. Guardian is an additional tool that keeps an eye out for any indications of hostile behavior in the data traffic flowing over the network of an organization.
The Guardian Air sensor is a third source from which Vantage gets its security data. Since its introduction in January of this year, it has the ability to identify efforts by hackers to get wireless access to a device. Guardian Air keeps an eye on the portions of the radio spectrum that wireless protocols like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi utilize to transmit data.
Vantage not only compiles information about vulnerabilities and breach attempts, but it also presents it in dashboard form to facilitate study. Administrators are able to access more specific information on particular things of interest thanks to an integrated query engine. In order to expedite the troubleshooting process, the platform has the ability to produce remedial ideas when it detects a possible security issue.
With the money raised in its most recent fundraising round, Nozomi plans to expand Vantage’s feature set. A portion of the funds will also be used by the startup for go-to-market campaigns.