As the number of cyberattacks increases, the enterprise sector is increasingly interested in technologies that automate responses to breaches. According to a 2023 survey by analytics firm Devo, 80% of security leaders expect to increase investments in security automation technologies this year, with most citing the technology's potential to help mitigate cyberthreats. Forecasts suggest that the security automation market could reach $26.6 billion by 2032.
One vendor that has had great success is Torq, which applies AI to abstract repetitive and tedious security-related tasks.
Torq CEO Ofer Smadari told TechCrunch that the company has generated more than $24 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), with a customer base that includes Procter & Gamble, Chipotle, PepsiCo and Wiz.
“We have tripled our revenue for the second consecutive year and expect to reach $100 million in annual recurring revenue by fiscal year 2026,” he said. “We have more than 150 direct enterprise customers and dozens of partners who serve approximately 900 companies around the world on our platform.”
This traction likely helped Torq close a $70 million Series C funding round in early September. Led by Evolution Equity Partners, the round brought Torq's total funding to $192 million.
Possibly, favourable market conditions also helped.
According to Crunchbase, VCs poured $4.4 billion into cybersecurity companies in Q2 2024, making it the sector's strongest funding quarter since 2022. Funding in Q2 was up 144% year over year and 63% from Q1, with deals over the two quarters nearly doubling compared to the first half of 2023.
“Growing in a responsible manner creates internal efficiencies that are already in place across a variety of key programs that drive our business, from research and development to go-to-market,” Smadari said. “We've built our company in a very fiscally responsible way.”
Smadari founded Torq with Leonid Belkind and Eldad Livni in 2020. Smadari previously founded Luminate, a zero trust platform that Symantec acquired in 2019. Prior to joining Torq, Belkind and Livni worked at Check Point, where they designed network cybersecurity tools.
Cybersecurity case summary from Torq's backend dashboard. Image courtesy of Torq
The three worked together at Symantec until around December 2019, when they left to follow Torq.
Torq's platform enables IT teams to create automated security workflows that integrate with their company's existing infrastructure. Torq offers a service that employs AI (specifically, large-scale language models similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT) to answer questions about SOC playbooks, which are guides that help cybersecurity analysts respond to incidents.
“By connecting to the security infrastructure stack, Torq empowers organizations to remediate security events and orchestrate security processes at scale,” said Smadari. “We aim to augment human security analysts with AI-driven capabilities, allowing them to focus on higher-level investigations while offloading more repetitive triage, investigation and response activities to AI.”
Hopefully, Torq's AI won't hallucinate too often or introduce biases that negatively impact its security decisions. When it comes to security, poor decisions can have far-reaching and devastating consequences.
Asked about today's AI challenges related to security, Smadari acknowledged that Torq's automation isn't perfect, but said the company is working to solve problems as they arise.
“We work with many companies in the space to build risk and attack surface models and subject our applications to various testing methodologies,” Smadari added.
Much of Torq's new Series C funding will be put toward product research and development and customer acquisition, Smadari said. In the coming months, Portland-based Torq plans to bolster its go-to-market team, which has about 200 staff and is focused on the U.S., Europe and Asia.
“Over the past few years, cybersecurity has proven to be one of the most resilient industries in times of economic uncertainty,” Smadari said. “From the beginning, our growth, and the associated expense increases, have been closely tied to revenue and customer growth.”
Bessemer Venture Partners, Notable Capital, Greenfield Partners and Strait Capital also participated in Torq's Series C.