As the next wave of cybersecurity emerges, investors back Xage to secure and transform environments spanning operations, IT, and cloud

Xage, the zero trust security company, today announced a $30M Series B, accelerating its efforts to make zero trust the dominant security strategy for real-world operations. Rapid growth in cyberattacks and Gartner’s recent recognition of cybersecurity mesh as a top strategic technology trend two years in a row has caused a surge in demand for security solutions that provide granular, identity-based controls that overlay operational, IT and cloud systems. In the wake of this activity, Xage’s mesh-protected Fabric has caught the attention of investors fueling the next wave of cybersecurity innovation.

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Piva, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm investing in visionary entrepreneurs solving critical industrial challenges with breakthrough technology, is leading the round. Momenta, Valor Equity Partners, and OurCrowd, along with existing investors March Capital, City Light Capital, Saints Capital, and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, are also participating. Mark Gudiksen, Managing Partner at Piva, and Michael Dolbec, Managing Partner at Momenta, will join the board. The latest round brings total Xage funding to $54 million raised to date.

Until recently, the security solutions serving real world operations have been focused on visibility and threat detection. But following hacks on the Colonial Pipeline, JBS, Kaseya, Brenntag, Copel, Toshiba, Oldsmar, and dozens of others, as well as a slew of federal regulations, a new wave of operational cybersecurity is emerging—the zero trust wave focused not only on network visibility and threat detection, but also on blocking hackers and preventing them from gaining hold.

“A zero trust security strategy—the modern alternative to perimeter-based security—is known to be the most effective approach to stopping hacking attempts at the source; it could have prevented the ransomware attacks we saw on the Colonial Pipeline, JBS, and hundreds of other hacks this year,” said Duncan Greatwood, CEO of Xage. “While zero trust can be difficult to achieve, particularly in operational environments with a mix of legacy and modern assets, the Xage Fabric was engineered with this complexity in mind. It’s bringing zero trust to operations in space, e-commerce logistics, energy, utilities, transportation, and beyond. With a series B under our belt, we’re now equipped to expand our reach and further protect the world’s most important assets and operations.”

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The impact of the Xage Fabric can be transformative. For instance, Xage helps the US Air Force enable secure data sharing, allowing maintenance teams to digitize manual processes and drive efficiency. Xage has partnered with renewable energy companies to ensure secure access to data, allowing them to predict the most efficient energy mix. Xage also helps utilities confidently leverage machine learning to optimize grid balancing, which drives down costs and energy consumption.

“Cybersecurity is essential to the future of industry and energy,” said Mark Gudiksen, Managing Partner at Piva Capital. “Xage has proven that it can bring a zero trust approach to these sectors and help customers not just sidestep devastating attacks, but digitize operations while remaining secure. As a new member of the Xage board, I’m eager to help deepen the company’s footprint in the industrial sector and beyond. We’ve only just begun to witness the impact of Xage’s technology.”

In just the past few months, Xage has significantly accelerated the adoption of zero trust for critical real-world operations. Xage has delivered more deployments in Q4 2021 than in the entirety of 2020. Further, partners such as 1898 & Co, a part of Burns & McDonnell, and Iron Bow were drawn to Xage in 2021 to help their own customers digitize securely. Xage’s 2021 partner count has increased 500% over 2020, and partner revenue increased more than 1000%.

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