2 min Security

Contrast Security is a unicorn, after a $150-million funding round

Contrast Security is a unicorn, after a $150-million funding round

Contrast Security, an application security startup, has raised $150 million in new funding to meet rising demand, gain more market share in an accelerated global expansion plan and provide itself with more flexibility to take action when presented with strategic acquisitions and opportunities.

Liberty Strategic Capital led the funding round (Series E) with Acero Capital, AXA Venture Partners, Microsoft’s M-12 Fund, General Catalyst, Battery Ventures, and Warburg Pincus.

The funding round was on a valuation north of $1 billion, taking Contrast Security to the unicorn fields for the first time. Including this round, the startup has raised about $269 million to date.

Bleeding edge disruption

Contrast Security was founded in 2014 to offer self-protecting software designed to protect enterprise software applications from the inside. It achieves this by enabling enterprise developers to build in security functions using an embedded module. This solution is pitched as a modernized approach to app security. The company’s platform claims to offer security tools that disrupt traditional app security solutions.

Contrast focuses on DevOps, agile and cloud-native apps, claiming that its modules can be set up and installed in a minute to start securing an app’s internal components using what the startup calls ‘deep security instrumentation.’

Catering to a new kind of economy

Alan Naumann, the Chief Executive Officer said in a statement that the global economy is run on software applications, saying the company is now seeing business leaders, including Google and Microsoft, commit publicly to spend billions combating cybersecurity in this fast-paced app-run economy.

The company has grown since it last had a funding round in February 2019.

The company claims it has a customer base in the tens of thousands of developers at some companies like Walgreens, AXA S.A., American Red Cross, Bayerische Motoren Werke, and DocuSign.