SIEM Vendor Exabeam Raises $75 Million To Take Share From Competitors

The funding will enable Exabeam to expand its sales reach and expedite new product features and configurations, and comes just nine months after the completion of a $50 million round.

Rising SIEM star Exabeam has completed a $75 million funding round to fuel its global efforts to displace legacy security management vendors.

The San Mateo, Calif.-based cybersecurity company said the funding will enable Exabeam to expand its sales reach and expedite new product features and configurations. The Series E round was led by early stage investment leader Lightspeed Venture Partners as well as new investor Sapphire Ventures, which the company said has backed 20 IPOs and more than 30 M&A exits since its founding in 1996.

Exabeam CEO Nir Polak praised Lightspeed and Sapphire's track record of backing groundbreaking public companies that ultimately end up dominating their markets like Box, DocuSign, MuleSoft, Nutanix and Square. Having the support of Lightspeed and Sapphire will only further Exabeam's mission to keep its customers out of the breach headlines, according to Polak.

[Related: Cybersecurity Startup Exabeam Raises $50M To Drive Global Growth]

"With the win rates we're seeing and the market opportunity in replacement business, we're raising money to accelerate our go-to-market and enhance our products to bring additional innovation to modern SOC [Security Operations Center] environments," Polak said.

The latest funding round comes just nine months after Exabeam raised $50 million in a Series D round that was also led by Lightspeed. All told, Exabeam has attracted $190 million in five rounds of outside funding, according to CrunchBase. Exabeam was founded in 2013 and currently employs 362 people, according to LinkedIn.

Since its Series D funding round, Exabeam said it has increased sales of its cloud offerings on the heels of the release of Exabeam SaaS Cloud, which was purchased by its first customer in the first three months of 2019. The company said it has also shifted its market perception over the past year from being a user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) vendor to being a leading SIEM provider.

Specifically, Exabeam said that 76 percent of its replacement deals over the past year have eliminated legacy SIEM vendors, with the company enjoying a 72 percent win rate against six of the industry's most prominent SIEM mainstays.

The company said it has taken the SIEM space by storm thanks to its flat, user-based pricing model as well as its streamlined threat detection and machine learning-powered behavioral analytics. To wit, Sapphire Ventures Managing Director Andres Ranum said Exabeam has helped customers conquer the hurdles of outdated technology as well as expensive, data-based pricing.

"As cyberattacks, cyberwarfare and corporate espionage are on the rise, Exabeam is enabling companies to analyze user behavior and spot even the most subtle anomalies in a way no other SIEM vendor has," Ranum said in a statement. "They're in an ideal position to be the next big security disrupter, and we're excited to be joining in their journey."

Lightspeed, meanwhile, has been a lead investor in Exabeam since the company's $30 million Series D round in February 2017, and Partner Ravi Mhatre said the firm is excited to double down on its support.

"Looking broadly at the security market in recent years, there have been several big exits from companies replacing legacy authentication and endpoint protection vendors," Mahtre said. "Security management is next, and Exabeam is well positioned to be the leader."

Exabeam rolled out the single-tier 3D Channel Program in 2015, and brought in former Carbon Black global channel chief Ken Hammond in January 2018 to spearhead the company's channel push in the Americas, according to the CRN 2019 Partner Program Guide). The firm makes between 1 percent and 2 percent of its indirect revenue available to partners for MDF or co-op, according to the PPG.