Cybersecurity specialist Huntress now has $100 million in annualized recurring revenue, company officials said, a milestone that moves the fast-growing startup closer to reaching its ambitions for a Wall Street debut.
Behind Wiz, Huntress is one of the most closely watched VC bets in the current crop of cybersecurity startups. Its Series D round, which was co-led in June by Meritech, Sapphire and Kleiner Perkins, more than doubled the company’s valuation to $1.5 billion.
Columbia, Md.-based Huntress, founded in 2015 by former National Security Agency cyberhackers, has logged over 70% annual revenue growth for the past two years, said CTO Chris Bisnett.
He said Huntress, which identifies hacks by relying on software and human threat analysis, is still burning cash each month, mostly on hiring. The company has added around 40 employees since June.
Huntress has a cash-burn ratio of 0.6, according to Ernie Bio, managing director of Forgepoint, the venture firm that led the startup’s Series A deal; a ratio less than 1.0 is seen as a high efficiency. The multiple is based on net burn rate divided by net new recurring revenue growth.
The latest revenue growth achievement tees the company up for an IPO in the near future.
“We’ve been thinking [an IPO timeline] of 18 to 24 months,” Bisnett said. “We’re just trying to get ready so that when the window does open, we’re ready to go.”
Cybersecurity investors have been on a tumultuous ride over the past 12 months. During that time, valuations of prominent private companies like Synk and Tanium have been significantly marked down from their peak.
But the industry has more recently seen some hints of a rebound, especially after the Crowdstrike mass outage in July stirred up corporate customers’ concerns over future cybersecurity breaches. Moreover, cybersecurity is getting fresh attention as the rapidly increasing capabilities of AI technology stoke fears of a new age of ever more sophisticated hacks and deepfakes.
Just on Thursday came news that Mastercard has agreed to acquire Recorded Future, a threat intelligence provider, from Insight Partners for $2.65 billion—more than three times its price when sold to Insight in 2019.
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