Private equity giant Thoma Bravo has announced that its security information and event management (SIEM) company LogRhythm will be merging with Exabeam, a rival cybersecurity company backed by the likes of Cisco and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
SIEM is the business of using real-time data gleaned from servers, network devices, and applications to flag abnormal activity and thwart potential security threats before they escalate. Consolidation in the space is rife. The LogRhythm and Exabeam merger news arrived on the same day as Palo Alto Networks confirmed it was acquiring the assets of IBM’s SIEM business, QRadar, which IBM had acquired in 2011. It also follows Cisco’s $28 billion megadeal to procure SIEM giant Splunk, a deal that closed in March.
More broadly, the cybersecurity space is awash with M&A activity: Earlier this month, Akamai revealed it was acquiring API security company Noname for $450 million; Permira bought a majority stake in digital fraud detection startup BioCatch at a $1.3 billion valuation; and Thoma Bravo reared its head again to take cybersecurity company Darktrace private in a $5 billion deal.
Elsewhere, cloud security platform Wiz hit a whopping $12 billion valuation on a $1 billion fundraise, an investment it says will be used substantively to scoop up other cybersecurity startups.
LogRhythm, for its part, had raised around $126 million before Thoma Bravo swooped in and acquired a majority stake back in 2018 for an undisclosed figure. Exabeam, meanwhile, took its total funding to nearly $400 million at its $200 million Series F round in 2021. Thoma Bravo hasn’t divulged Exabeam’s valuation at this merger. Exabeam was previously valued at $2.4 billion. Many companies’ valuations have plummeted in the great post-pandemic correction, however, and Exabeam has hit a few bumps. This Reddit post details layoffs seven months ago, for example.
As with just about every sector these days, AI is playing an increasingly pivotal part in the cybersecurity space, and it’s “AI-driven security solutions” that LogRhythm CEO Chris O’Malley says is what Exabeam brings to the table.
“Together, our expertise and shared strategic vision will accelerate innovative AI-driven cybersecurity solutions for customers around the world,” O’Malley said in a statement. “Vigilant CISOs have eagerly awaited the emergence of a strong, customer-obsessed, singularly-focused global leader in AI-driven security operations — one that offers a best-of-breed alternative to the frustratingly complex options on the market today. That day has arrived.”
Thoma Bravo said it expects the merger to close in Q3 2024.
The prospects for troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse have gone from bad to worse this week after a United States Trustee filed an emergency motion on Wednesday. The trustee is asking…
U.K.-based Seraphim Space is spinning up its 13th accelerator program, with nine participating companies working on a range of tech from propulsion to in-space manufacturing and space situational awareness. The…
OpenAI has reached a deal with Reddit to use the social news site’s data for training AI models. In a blog post on OpenAI’s press relations site, the company said…
X users will now be able to discover posts from new Communities that are trending directly from an Explore tab within the section.
For Mark Zuckerberg’s 40th birthday, his wife got him a photoshoot. Zuckerberg gives the camera a sly smile as he sits amid a carefully crafted re-creation of his childhood bedroom.…
Strava announced a slew of features, including AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, a new ‘family’ subscription plan, dark mode and more.
We all fall down sometimes. Astronauts are no exception. You need to be in peak physical condition for space travel, but bulky space suits and lower gravity levels can be…
Microsoft will launch its custom Cobalt 100 chips to customers as a public preview at its Build conference next week, TechCrunch has learned. In an analyst briefing ahead of Build,…
What a wild week for transportation news! It was a smorgasbord of news that seemed to touch every sector and theme in transportation.
Sony Music Group has sent letters to more than 700 tech companies and music streaming services to warn them not to use its music to train AI without explicit permission.…
Winston Chi, Butter’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that “most parties, including our investors and us, are making money” from the exit.
The investor lawsuit is related to Bolt securing a $30 million personal loan to Ryan Breslow, which was later defaulted on.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, launched an enterprise version of the prominent social network in 2015. It always seemed like a stretch for a company built on a consumer…
X, formerly Twitter, turned TweetDeck into X Pro and pushed it behind a paywall. But there is a new column-based social media tool in town, and it’s from Instagram Threads.…
As part of 2024’s Accessibility Awareness Day, Google is showing off some updates to Android that should be useful to folks with mobility or vision impairments. Project Gameface allows gamers…
A hacker listed the data allegedly breached from Samco on a known cybercrime forum.
A top European privacy watchdog is investigating following the recent breaches of Dell customers’ personal information, TechCrunch has learned. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) deputy commissioner Graham Doyle confirmed to…
Ampere and Qualcomm aren’t the most obvious of partners. Both, after all, offer Arm-based chips for running data center servers (though Qualcomm’s largest market remains mobile). But as the two…
At Google’s I/O developer conference, the company made its case to developers — and to some extent, consumers — why its bets on AI are ahead of rivals. At the…
TechCrunch Disrupt has always been the ultimate convergence point for all things startup and tech. In the bustling world of innovation, it serves as the “big top” tent, where entrepreneurs,…
There’s apparently a lot of demand for an on-demand handyperson. Khosla Ventures and Pear VC have just tripled down on their investment in Honey Homes, which offers up a dedicated…
TikTok is testing the ability for users to upload 60-minute videos, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The feature is available to a limited group of users in select…
Flock Safety is a multibillion-dollar startup that’s got eyes everywhere. As of Wednesday, with the company’s new Solar Condor cameras, those eyes are solar-powered and use wireless 5G networks to…
Since he was very young, Bar Mor knew that he would inevitably do something with real estate. His family was involved in all types of real estate projects, from ground-up…
Poshmark, the social commerce site that lets people buy and sell new and used items to each other, launched a paid marketing tool on Thursday, giving sellers the ability to…
Google is launching a Gemini add-on for educational institutes through Google Workspace.
More money for the generative AI boom: Y Combinator-backed developer infrastructure startup Recall.ai announced Thursday it has raised a $10 million Series A funding round, bringing its total raised to over…
Engineers Adam Keating and Jeremy Andrews were tired of using spreadsheets and screenshots to collab with teammates — so they launched a startup, CoLab, to build a better way. The…
Reddit announced on Wednesday that it is reintroducing its awards system after shutting down the program last year. The company said that most of the mechanisms related to awards will…
Sigma Computing, a startup building a range of data analytics and business intelligence tools, has raised $200 million in a fresh VC round.
