Blockchain security firm Halborn raises $90 million in Series A led by Summit Partners
Miami, FL – Halborn, a cybersecurity firm serving both traditional finance and blockchain-based clients, announced the completion of a $90 million growth financing, the first external financing in the company’s history. Global growth investor Summit Partners led the round, with participation from Castle Island, Digital Currency Group, Brevan Howard, Third Prime, Sky Vision Capital and Fenwick. The funding was first announced in a Bloomberg exclusive.
Halborn was founded in 2019 by Steven Walbroehl and Rob Behnke with a vision to secure the blockchain and protect users from data and money loss. Profitable since its inception, Walbroehl and Behnke bootstrapped Halborn into a leader in Web3 security. Halborn is growing rapidly and today serves over 250 clients and employs more than 100 team members worldwide.
“With security vulnerabilities dominating the crypto news headlines, and over $1.5 billion in economic losses from DeFi hacks in 2022 to date, the demand for Web3 security is only increasing,” said Halborn co-founder and CISO Steven Walbroehll, author of the SANS Institute course about Blockchain and Smart Contract Security. “Funding from this Series A will be used to expand our global team of offensive security engineers and build our Halborn Labs division, accelerating our robust pipeline of SaaS security products.”
With thousands of centralized and decentralized applications touching Web3 and the number of developers growing rapidly, the Web3 attack surface has grown exponentially in recent years. Applications and APIs are often far more vulnerable than the blockchains they are developed on. Open source vulnerabilities and human programming error have created significant, well-documented cyber risks – but the market has developed few security standards to meet this challenge.
Operating across the software development lifecycle, Halborn offers a suite of products and services designed to identify and close vulnerabilities in Web3 applications, helping to create the security standards that the market currently lacks.
Halborn currently serves a diverse global customer base spanning Layer 1 blockchains, infrastructure providers, financial institutions, and application and game developers. Halborn’s clients include the Solana Foundation, Avalanche and Figment.
“Summit has a long history of working with innovative cybersecurity leaders focused on protecting against both monetary and data breaches in an ever-evolving and ever-growing threat landscape. We believe the stakes and costs are even higher in Web3, given the decentralized development of and dollars controlled by Web3 applications,” said Matt Hamilton, managing director of Summit Partners, who has joined Halborn’s board. “In a very short time, Halborn has established itself as a globally recognized blockchain security brand working across Web3 and Web2 environments. The Halborn team has built a reputation for tackling complex projects and has an impressive track record of identify high-profile vulnerabilities and breaches.”
“Cybersecurity risk has historically been a barrier for organizations looking to launch products in the blockchain industry. Halborn is changing this risk/reward equation, expanding the addressable market for public blockchain technology. We are excited to partner with Halborn as they expand their product offering,” said Matthew Walsh, founder of Castle Island.
“Third Prime is focused on investing in market leaders in some of the most important areas of crypto, and we believe the Halborn team, track record and technology fit perfectly with this mandate. We are excited to partner with them as they secure companies at across the square,” added Wes Barton, Managing Partner of Third Prime.
