Darktrace Poised for More Growth via Thoma Bravo Acquisition

Darktrace will continue to build momentum with its partners under Thoma Bravo’s ownership.

That’s according to Dan Monahan, senior vice president of Darktrace’s global partner organization. Thoma Bravo has completed its acquisition of the global provider of cybersecurity AI for $5.32 billion.

Thoma Bravo is taking Darktrace private. Darktrace became a public company in spring of 2021, trading on the London Stock Exchange.

A previous deal to buy Darktrace fell apart in September 2022 when the parties couldn't come to terms.

Darktrace uses self-learning AI to neutralize cyber threats and automate responses to cyber incidents, leveraging its R&D expertise. The company says its technology continuously learns and updates its knowledge of an organization’s business data, and applies that understanding to help transform security operations to a state of proactive cyber resilience.

Thoma Bravo ‘Hugely Valuable’ Partner

Monahan tells us as Darktrace CEO Jill Popelka said in her comments at close, Thoma Bravo will be a “hugely valuable” partner for his company's next stage of growth.

Darktrace's Dan Monahan

“The Darktrace global partner organization has been working hard over the last 12 months to evolve and transform how we go to market with partners to drive joint success,” he said. “Partners are core to our strategy, not just a department. We’re going to continue to build on all the great momentum we’ve had with our partners.” 

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Monahan said Darktrace has already made “so many great updates” to how it works with partners and “I’m excited to continue that momentum."

“Just a few months ago we launched the new Darktrace Defenders Partner Program to empower partners and accelerate adoption of the Darktrace platform and services,” he said. “We’ve rolled out new enablement, education and resources, hosted on a new and improved portal for partners, and we've been enabling our teams to help ensure partners have a consistently great experience when they work with Darktrace. We’re going to keep building on all this great work throughout the rest of 2024 and into 2025 so that our partners can take advantage of the innovation coming from Darktrace. To give you an example, we just announced that Darktrace/Cloud now provides cloud detection and response capabilities for Microsoft Azure, which is a great opportunity for our partners as they help customers secure complex multicloud environments using the power of Darktrace AI.”

‘Powerful’ Combination

Darktrace and Thoma Bravo are a “powerful” combination, Monahan said.

Related:Darktrace Rolls Out Defenders Partner Program

“Darktrace’s approach to AI-powered, proactive cybersecurity is highly unique, and together with our partners we are already keeping customers ahead of the changing threat landscape every day,” he said. “Protecting customers from unknown threats using cutting-edge AI is the heart of what Darktrace does and our partners play a big role in that. I think Jill said it best when she commented that together with Thoma Bravo we can take this even further.”

Seth Boro, managing partner at Thoma Bravo, said Darktrace holds a "unique position" at the forefront of cybersecurity technology.

“As one of the early adopters of AI, the value of its capabilities is evident to businesses, governments and society across the world,” he said. “We are excited to work alongside Jill and the Darktrace team to build on their success, supporting their ambitions to protect the world from the most advanced cyber threats.”