Immersive Labs, the world’s first fully interactive, on-demand and gamified cyber skills platform, has closed $40 million in funding led by global growth equity investor Summit Partners, with participation from existing investor Goldman Sachs. The investment will be used to support expansion initiatives in North America, where customer demand highlights a clear need to optimize cyber skills and guard against constantly evolving threats. We believe this new round of funding illustrates how this dynamic technology is ushering in a new era of active training that enables professionals to acquire additional skills in richly immersive environments at their own pace and on their own schedules.
“Gaps in cybersecurity knowledge meaningfully increase risk to an organization, creating vulnerability and presenting opportunity for attackers. The rapid, constantly evolving threat landscape has made traditional classroom training for cyber skills obsolete,” said James Hadley, CEO of Immersive Labs. “At a time when cyber skills are stretched across the board, the Immersive Labs platform enables companies to identify these weak points and rapidly skill people to address them.”
Immersive Labs was founded by CEO James Hadley, former UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) cybersecurity instructor, who envisioned transforming the way organizations acquire and deploy new skills. The company has experienced rapid growth since its launch, with 750% year-over-year increase in annual recurring revenues and an employee base that is now more than 100 strong. The company plans to build on its momentum from its new North American headquarters in Boston.
More than 100 organizations worldwide are already experiencing the benefits of the Immersive Labs platform, including British Telecom, Bank of Montreal, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, as well as government bodies such as the UK’s National Health Service and London’s Metropolitan Police.
Immersive Labs is an on-demand, continuous and trackable cyber skills development platform that is designed to enable both security specialists and business users to step into real-world cybersecurity situations based on real-world attack techniques and emerging or zero-day threats. These simulations are designed to challenge users and help them understand and guard against attacks in a safe environment, strengthening skill levels across the board, from identifying phishing attacks to reverse-engineering malware.
Data captured by users can also be employed to instantly analyze internal skill levels and drive improvement. The Immersive Labs platform maps an organization’s existing capabilities to familiar frameworks, including MITRE ATT&CK and NIST NICE. These features help identify specific skill shortages to be addressed and make the platform an important tool for planning, reporting, and forecasting security and risk.
Antony Clavel, a Principal with Summit Partners, said, “Cybersecurity has been a core investment theme for Summit for many years. We recognize in Immersive Labs many of the same qualities that we’ve seen in other cybersecurity leaders: a technically strong and strategically thoughtful management team; a differentiated product addressing a large and urgent market need; and a rapidly growing base of blue-chip customers. We believe Immersive Labs is well-positioned to become a global category leader in cyber skills development.”
James Hayward, from Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division, said, “We are impressed with Immersive Labs’ achievements since our initial investment and see further growth potential as the team continues to execute on their vision and expand to new geographies. The platform is continually evolving to help address the gap in cyber skills that is impacting companies and governments across the globe.”
About Immersive Labs
Immersive Labs is the world’s first fully interactive, on-demand, and gamified cyber skills platform. Our technology delivers challenge-based skills content developed by experts with access to the latest threat intelligence. Our unique approach engages and measures entire workforces, equipping all employees with critical skills and practical experience in real-time. Immersive Labs simulates cyber scenarios covering everything from the basics to threat hunting and reverse-engineering malware. At the heart of our platform are labs: story-driven exercises accessed from a browser in seconds. We have hundreds of practical, gamified labs dedicated to a huge range of skills and mapped against industry frameworks.
For more information on Immersive Labs’ offering, please visit www.immersivelabs.com.
About Goldman Sachs
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm that provides a wide range of financial services to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and individuals. Founded in 1869, the firm is headquartered in New York and maintains offices in all major financial centers around the world.
About Summit Partners
Founded in 1984, Summit Partners is a global alternative investment firm that is currently managing more than $19 billion in capital dedicated to growth equity, fixed income and public equity opportunities. Summit invests across growth sectors of the economy and has invested in more than 500 companies in technology, healthcare and other growth industries. These companies have completed more than 140 public equity offerings, and more than 190 have been acquired through strategic mergers and sales. Notable security and technology companies backed by Summit Partners include Avast, Darktrace, InfoArmor, McAfee, NetWitness, Red Canary, RiskIQ and SafeBoot, Summit maintains offices in North America and Europe, and invests in companies around the world.
