October 2021 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 October 2021 dataset — every named company, round, investor, and segment.
What October told us
October 2021 produced the largest disclosed-funded month of 2021 so far — $2.92B across 32 rounds, overtaking March's $2.38B reading. The funded side ran heavy across eight nine-figure rounds inside a single month — Invicti Security $625M growth funding in AppSec, Orca Security $550M Series C in Detection/Response, Wiz $250M Series C in Cloud, Devo $250M Series D+ in Analytics, Coalition $205M Series D+ in Cyber Insurance, Dragos $200M Series D+ in OT/ICS, Cato Networks $200M Series D+ in SASE, and Aura $200M Series D+ in Identity. Eight nine-figure funded rounds inside a single month is a density the workbook had not previously tracked. Invicti's $625M growth round was the largest single funded round of the year through October; Orca Security's $550M Series C returned the company to the workbook for its fourth tracked event in roughly 17 months; Wiz's $250M Series C was the company's fourth workbook event of the year, after rounds in March ($130M Series B), May ($120M Series B), and the prior $100M Series A in December 2020. Coalition's $205M Series D+ was its third 2021 round inside seven months.
Wiz and Coalition both deserve standalone framing for in-year cadence. Wiz's four rounds across less than twelve months — A in December 2020, two B rounds in March and May 2021, and a C in October — represent a continuous cloud-security funded trajectory that the workbook does not have a prior parallel for at this pace. Coalition's three Series D+ rounds inside 2021 (March $175M, September $205M, October $205M) take the company to roughly $585M in disclosed 2021 funding inside Cyber Insurance — one of the workbook's clearer single-vendor in-year capital concentrations.
M&A column ran 11 acquisitions, with TransUnion's $638M acquisition of Sontiq in Identity the largest disclosed event. TransUnion's October Sontiq deal followed the company's $3.10B Nuestar acquisition from September by one month — same buyer, two large identity-fraud-verification acquisitions in two consecutive months totaling $3.74B in disclosed value. Two further M&A events cleared at smaller disclosed values, with KnowBe4 acquiring SecurityAdvisor at $80M in Training and Plurilock acquiring CloudCodes at $1.7M in SASE rounding out the disclosed column.
Stage and segment breakdown
| Stage | Count |
|---|---|
| Seed | 5 |
| Series A | 9 |
| Series B | 6 |
| Series C | 4 |
| Series D+ | 6 |
| Growth Funding | 1 |
| Acquisition | 11 |
| Top segments | Transactions |
|---|---|
| Data | 7 |
| SASE | 4 |
| SaaS Security | 3 |
| AppSec | 3 |
| Identity | 3 |
| OT/ICS | 3 |
Two deals worth your attention
Invicti Security — $625M growth round in AppSec. Invicti Security raised $625M in growth funding for its application security testing platform, the largest single funded round of 2021 so far. The round combined two Invicti portfolio brands (the historical Netsparker and Acunetix platforms under the Invicti umbrella) and confirmed that AppSec testing was clearing nine-figure capital at scale through 2021. Inside the funded-side rankings, Invicti's $625M sat above the prior 2021 record (Lacework's $525M Series C from January) by $100M, taking the funded-round leaderboard for the year to a new high.
TransUnion's $638M acquisition of Sontiq. TransUnion acquired Sontiq at $638M, the largest disclosed M&A event of October and the company's second large identity-fraud-verification acquisition in two consecutive months after the $3.10B Nuestar deal in September. Combined, TransUnion's September and October M&A activity reached $3.74B in disclosed value across two transactions inside Identity and Fraud — a same-buyer concentration the workbook does not have a prior parallel for at this scale.
Companies we've covered before
Orca Security first appeared in May 2020 with a $20M Series A in Detection/Response, returning in December 2020 with a $55M Series B and March 2021 with a $210M Series C in the same segment. The October 2021 $550M Series C is Orca's fourth tracked event — same segment classification across all four — and one of the workbook's clearest single-segment four-round trajectories inside cloud-native detection.
Wiz first appeared in December 2020 with a $100M Series A in Cloud, returning in March 2021 with a $130M Series B and May 2021 with a $120M Series B in the same segment. The October 2021 $250M Series C is Wiz's fourth tracked event — same segment classification across all four — and one of the workbook's most compressed continuous funding trajectories at a roughly ten-month A-to-C cadence.
Devo first appeared in September 2020 with a $60M Series D+ in Analytics. The October 2021 $250M Series D+ is Devo's second tracked event, same segment classification, and a 4.2x step-up over the prior round.
Coalition first appeared in March 2021 with a $175M Series D+ in Cyber Insurance, returning in September 2021 with a $205M Series D+ in the same segment. The October 2021 $205M Series D+ is Coalition's third tracked event — same segment, same stage, same disclosed size as the prior round — taking the company's 2021 disclosed funding to roughly $585M across three rounds.
The other 41 transactions are in the data feed — including the 11 acquisitions whose values never hit the press. Get October'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.