StackPath Grabs Up $180 Million In Funding

Aiming to stop hackers in their paths, startup StackPath came out of stealth mode on Monday (July 25) with $180 million in venture capital funding.

The company, which also made four acquisitions on its first day as an operating company, is launching a Security-as-a-Service platform to help companies combat data hacks. The companies it acquired include MaxCDN, Fireblade, Cloak and Staminus. With the acquisitions, StackPath also increases its customer count.

ABRY Partners led the round of funding with a $150 million investment. Unnamed so-called “insiders” provided the extra $30 million for the round of fundraising. It’s not clear if StackPath used the funding to make the buys or if the cash comes from elsewhere. StackPath was founded by Lance Crosby, founder and CEO of SoftLayer, which was sold to IBM for $2 billion in 2013. StackPath is betting that companies will be drawn to a huge security platform in the cloud.

The move on the part of StackPath comes at a time when companies of all sizes are reeling from data breaches and infiltrations that not only shake customers’ confidence but cost the companies millions of dollars. According to research firm IDC, there were 400 million malware attacks in 2015 alone. It is statistics like that that prompted StackPath to launch a way to stop the hackers.

“The internet is where the world does business. It may be the single most important utility supporting businesses today, yet we continue to overtax the aging infrastructure and struggle to make it secure,” said Crosby in a statement. “The StackPath platform is an integrated response to a fragmented problem created by too many individual, appliance-based, bolt-on security solutions. It’s time to give businesses internet services that have security built in, not bolted on, so they can be reliable guardians of their most precious assets.”