As the amount of cyberattacks increases, there may be growing interest within the enterprise sector in technologies that automate breach response. According to a 2023 study Opinion poll According to analytics firm Devo, 80% of security leaders expect to extend investment in security automation technology this yr, with most citing the technology's potential to assist mitigate cyber threats. Projections say the safety automation market may very well be value $26.6 billion by 2032.
One provider that has had above-average success is Torquethat uses AI to abstract repetitive, tedious safety-related tasks.
Thanks to a customer base that features Procter & Gamble, Chipotle, PepsiCo and Wiz, Torq's annual recurring revenue (ARR) has surpassed $24 million, CEO Ofer Smadari tells TechCrunch.
“We have tripled our revenue for 2 consecutive years and are forecasting $100 million in annual revenue by fiscal yr 2026,” he said. “We have greater than 150 direct enterprise customers, in addition to dozens of partners providing services to just about 900 firms around the globe based on our platform.”
This success could have helped Torq close a $70 million Series C funding round in early September. Led by Evolution Equity Partners, Torq has now raised a complete of $192 million.
Favorable market conditions probably also helped.
In the second quarter of 2024, VCs invested $4.4 billion in cybersecurity firms, after According to Crunchbase, this was the strongest funding quarter for the sector since 2022. Funding within the second quarter increased 144% year-over-year and 63% in comparison with the primary quarter, while the variety of deal deals within the two quarters nearly doubled in comparison with the primary half of 2023.
“Responsible growth results in internal efficiencies which might be already present in several key programs across our business, from research and development to launch,” said Smadari. “We have built our company in a really financially responsible way.”
Smadari founded Torq in 2020 with Leonid Belkind and Eldad Livni. Previously, Smadari founded Luminate, a Zero trust Platform that Symantec acquired in 2019. Belkind and Livni were at Check Point, where they developed network cybersecurity tools, before joining Torq.
The trio worked together at Symantec until around December 2019 after which left the corporate to deal with Torq.
Today, Torq's platform enables IT teams to create automated security workflows that integrate with their organization's existing infrastructure. Torq offers a service that uses AI – specifically, large language models like OpenAI's ChatGPT – to reply questions on SOC playbooks, the guides that help cybersecurity analysts reply to incidents.
“By connecting to the safety infrastructure stack, Torq enables organizations to remediate security incidents and orchestrate security processes at scale,” said Smadari. “Our goal is to reinforce human security analysts with AI-driven capabilities so that they can deal with higher levels of investigation while leaving more repetitive triage, investigation and response activities to AI.”
One can only hope that Torq's AI doesn't often hallucinate or introduce biases that ultimately negatively affect a security decision. When it involves safety, unsuitable decisions can have far-reaching and devastating consequences.
When asked about today's AI challenges by way of safety, Smadari acknowledged that Torq's automation isn't perfect, but he said the corporate works to resolve problems as they arise.
“We work with a lot of firms on this space, creating risk and attack surface models and subjecting our applications to varied testing procedures,” Smadari added.
Much of the brand new money from Torq's Series C will go toward product research and development and customer acquisition, Smadari said. Over the following few months, New York-based Torq, which has nearly 200 employees, will bolster its go-to-market teams, specializing in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
“Over the past few years, cybersecurity has proven to be one of the crucial resilient industries in times of economic uncertainty,” said Smadari. “From the start, our company growth and subsequently the expansion of our expenses have been closely tied to revenue and customer growth.”
Bessemer Venture Partners, Notable Capital, Greenfield Partners and Strait Capital also participated in Torq’s Series C.
