The U.S. cybersecurity software company Semperis said it raised more than $200 million in a funding round led by the private equity firm KKR & Co (NYSE:KKR) Inc. The company’s valuation in this round was much higher than in the last one.
Semper is told Reuters that new investors like Ten Eleven Ventures and new investors like Insight Partners joined KKR in the round.
The company didn’t say what its most recent valuation was, but PitchBook data showed that it was worth about $142 million after it raised $40 million in May 2020.
Since then, the identity security company in Hoboken, New Jersey, has seen strong growth as businesses invest in security solutions that can protect them better when they work from home.
“We are focusing on identity-driven cyber resilience and threat mitigation because, in this new world where companies work remotely and access applications and assets in the cloud, putting everything behind a firewall doesn’t offer the same level of protection,” said Mickey Bressman, the CEO of Semperis.
Semper is was started in 2014, and it provides identity security solutions for hybrid Active Directory users. Its main focus is on Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Active Directory, which is a directory service that many Fortune 500 companies use.
Semper made $11.6 million in sales in 2020, and the company told Reuters that its sales have grown by more than 100% year-over-year.
With the new money, Semperis says it wants to hire more people to work on research and development in the US, Canada, and Israel. It also wants to keep adding customers in Europe and Asia.
It also said that it plans to protect a customer’s entire cloud data, not just their identities.
KKR is making investments through its Next Generation Technology Growth Fund II. In January 2020, investors gave $2.2 billion to this fund.
KKR is an active investor in cybersecurity companies. In its portfolio, there are two companies that went public last year: artificial intelligence company Darktrace PLC and digital identity management company ForgeRock Inc.