The Gately Report: Blackpoint Cyber to Accelerate Innovation with Growth Investment

With a recent $190 million growth investment, Blackpoint Cyber will focus on more innovation and partner enablement in the months ahead.

That’s according to Wil Santiago, Blackpoint Cyber’s vice president of threat operations. Bain Capital Tech Opportunities led the investment with participation from Accel. Bain and Accel joined existing investors including Adelphi Capital Partners, Telecom Ventures, Pelican Ventures and WP Global Partners.

In light of the growth investment, TEDCO, Maryland’s economic engine for technology companies, announced the successful exit of Blackpoint Cyber from its portfolio. In 2018, TEDCO invested $200,000 in Blackpoint Cyber to support its growth and development.

Blackpoint Cyber’s Top Priorities

Blackpoint Cyber’s Wil Santiago

“Blackpoint plans on using a lot of these investment funds for investing in tech and innovation, and partner enablement,” Santiago said. “That’s the priorities for Blackpoint, enabling our partners, getting them into our ecosystem and then allowing them to enjoy all the fruits of the ecosystem paired with my 24/7 security operations center (SOC) that’s monitoring all the customers for our partners.”

Innovation is “never cheap,” said David Rushmer, Blackpoint Cyber’s director of threat research.

Blackpoint Cyber’s David Rushmer

“We want to excel our innovation,” he said. “We want to speed up what we’re trying to deliver in the time frame we’re trying to deliver. The threat landscape as a whole is ever evolving and one of the biggest challenges is to stay ahead of the curve, and unfortunately that does involve capital. The good news is that with the Bain investment and also their general interest in this whole space, they’ve not just thrown the money in with an intention of going hey, return our investment. They have a very keen interest in understanding themselves how the threat landscape is changing. So the deal in all honesty benefits both us and them. The great news for our customers is that innovation from our side of things will turn around a lot faster than we had originally intended.”

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