August 2023 Cyber Funding & M&A Brief
Published by Pinpoint Search Group — the cybersecurity executive search firm that tracks every disclosed vendor funding round and acquisition in the sector.
At a glance
Get the full August 2023 dataset — every named company, round, investor, and segment.
What August told us
August 2023 was the highest-transaction month of the year — 46 deals and 41 funding rounds — and ran $901M in disclosed capital. Funding breadth was the story: no single round exceeded $200M, but six rounds cleared above $40M across Network Security (Nile at $175M Series C), Identity (SpyCloud at $110M growth), Cyber Insurance (Resilience at $100M Series D+), AppSec (Endor Labs at $70M Series A), SaaS Security (Grip Security at $41M Series B), and GRC (Hyperproof at $40M growth).
M&A delivered three disclosed transactions totaling $748M. Check Point's $490M acquisition of Perimeter 81 was the largest — Check Point's first nine-figure cyber acquisition in years and the consolidating SASE move that complemented Cato Networks' continued independent funding trajectory. Rubrik's $250M acquisition of Laminar in Data security extended the year's run of data-security tuck-ins (IBM/Polar Security in May was the precedent), and SailPoint's $8.3M pickup of Osirium in Identity rounded out the disclosed M&A column.
Endor Labs' $70M Series A in AppSec is worth flagging as a multi-segment signal. The company's positioning sits at the AppSec/supply-chain boundary and the Series A scale — uncommon for that boundary so far in 2023 — extends the Stacklok-led supply-chain activity seen in May. The 29 Seed and Series A rounds in August are factually the most of any 2023 month so far; the distribution is consistent with the year's early-stage baseline rather than exceptional in itself.
Stage and segment breakdown
| Stage | Count |
|---|---|
| Seed | 18 |
| Series A | 11 |
| Series B | 3 |
| Series C | 2 |
| Series D+ | 2 |
| Growth Funding | 3 |
| Merger | 1 |
| Acquisition | 5 |
| Top segments | Transactions |
|---|---|
| Identity | 9 |
| Data | 5 |
| Detection/Response | 4 |
| Network Security | 4 |
| AppSec | 4 |
| Vulnerability | 4 |
Two deals worth your attention
Check Point's $490M acquisition of Perimeter 81. Check Point agreed to acquire Perimeter 81 at $490M, its first nine-figure cyber acquisition in years and the largest disclosed SASE-segment M&A event of 2023. The deal folds Perimeter 81's network-as-a-service platform into Check Point's broader security stack and is the August counterpart to Cisco/Splunk's later September announcement — both deals signaled platform vendors moving on adjacent network-and-security categories at scale.
Nile — $175M Series C in Network Security. Nile raised $175M Series C for its network-as-a-service platform, the largest funded round of August. The round was Nile's first workbook appearance at scale and the largest Network Security Series C of 2023 — a useful comp for the broader pattern of network-segment vendors clearing growth capital even as pure-cyber funding compressed.
Companies we've covered before
SpyCloud first appeared in August 2020 with a $30M Series C in Identity. The August 2023 $110M growth round is SpyCloud's second tracked event, same segment classification, and a meaningful step-up in round size over the three-year gap between events.
Perimeter 81 first appeared in August 2020 with a $40M Series B in SASE, returning in June 2022 with a $100M Series C in the same segment. The August 2023 $490M acquisition by Check Point closes a three-year arc from Series B to strategic exit at consistent SASE classification across every workbook event.
Grip Security first appeared in April 2021 with a $6M Seed in SaaS Security, returning in December 2021 with a $19M Series A and again in March 2023 with an undisclosed growth event. The August 2023 $41M Series B is Grip's fourth tracked event — same segment classification across all four — and one of the few 2023 vendors with four workbook appearances inside the same single segment.
The other 44 transactions are in the data feed — including the 5 acquisitions whose values never hit the press. Get August's details and more →
Methodology
Every transaction in this brief was sourced from a primary public report and dedupe-checked against the master Pinpoint funding workbook, which now contains ~2,600 transactions back to May 2020. Funding totals reflect disclosed capital only; acquisition values are included where publicly available.
Each deal is classified against Pinpoint's normalized cybersecurity segment taxonomy — read directly off what the company says they protect and mapped to one of the canonical segments. The taxonomy has been maintained continuously since 2020 and currently covers roughly 55 segments. Identity, Data, Detection / Response, and Threat Intel have been tracked from the first month of the series; AppSec and GRC entered the following month; emergent categories (AI/LLM, Supply Chain, Quantum, Browser) are added when they first appear in vendor positioning. That normalization layer is what makes multi-year, cross-segment comparisons possible against an otherwise inconsistent vocabulary in the broader market.
About Pinpoint Search Group
Cybersecurity innovators work with Pinpoint Search Group to identify, attract, and land professionals that enable maturation, scale, and successful outcomes. As start-ups continue raising millions in funding and established vendors make acquisitions to round out their offerings, Pinpoint Search Group is keeping track.
Get the underlying data
The narrative above is the free version. The paid Pinpoint Cyber Funding Data feed gives you every named transaction, every disclosed investor, every segment classification — exportable, filterable, and updated as the deals close.