Israeli data security company Cyera is preparing to raise about $800 million at a $20 billion valuation, Calcalist reported. According to the report, about $300 million will come from Cyberstarts, the Israeli venture fund that invested in the company in its earliest stages. Talks to raise at a $20 billion valuation were first reported earlier this month.
The jump in valuation is especially sharp. In June Cyera raised $600 million at a $12 billion valuation, and its total funding then passed $2.3 billion. If the new round closes, its valuation will rise about 65% in under six months. Cyera builds a platform that finds and classifies sensitive data across an organization's systems and checks who can access it, a field that got an enormous boost from AI: when AI agents get access to data, organizations want to know exactly which data.
The most interesting detail is Cyberstarts' investment. A venture fund investing $300 million in a single company, at a valuation already reaching $20 billion, concentrates a huge part of its risk in one place. It may be a sign of deep confidence in the company, and it is also a bet that, if it turns out wrong, would hurt the fund's own investors. Cyera did not respond to the reports.
The round comes in a week when money keeps flowing into data security and AI security in Israel: Sentra raised $150 million last week, Daylight and Bay together raised $130 million today, and Vanta is acquiring Pillar. For investors, data security in the AI era is one of the few fields where they still pay a premium without hesitation.
But a $20 billion valuation requires Cyera to become a truly huge company: by common software valuation multiples, it will need billions in revenue to justify it at an IPO. Until then, every bigger round raises the bar, and narrows the number of buyers who could pay an even higher price for it.
