As the volume of cyberattacks grows, there’s increasing interest from the corporate sector in tech to help automate responses to breaches. Per a 2023 survey from analytics firm Devo, 80% of security leaders expected expanded investments in security automation technology this year; most cited the tech’s potential to support cyber threat mitigation. Projections say that the market for security automation could be worth $26.6 billion by 2032.
One vendor that’s experienced outsized success is Torq, which applies AI to abstract away repetitive, onerous security-related tasks.
On the back of a customer base that includes Procter & Gamble, Chipotle, PepsiCo, and Wiz, Torq’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) has eclipsed $24 million, CEO Ofer Smadari tells TechCrunch.
“We have tripled revenue across two consecutive years, and are projecting $100 million ARR by fiscal year 2026,” he said. “We have more than 150 direct enterprise customers, as well as dozens of partners that are providing services to nearly 900 enterprises worldwide based on our platform.”
This traction likely helped Torq to close a $70 million Series C funding round earlier in September. Led by Evolution Equity Partners, the round brings Torq’s total raised to $192 million.
Favorable market conditions probably helped, too.
In Q2 2024, VCs funneled $4.4 billion into cybersecurity firms, according to Crunchbase, marking the strongest funding quarter for the sector since 2022. Funding in Q2 was up 144% year-over-year and 63% from Q1, while dealmaking across the two quarters nearly doubled versus in the first half of 2023.
“Growing in a responsible manner results in internal efficiencies that are already in place in various important programs powering our operations, from R&D through go-to-market,” Smadari said. “We have built our company in a very fiscally responsible way.”
Smadari started Torq with Leonid Belkind and Eldad Livni in 2020. Smadari previously founded Luminate, a zero trust platform that Symantec acquired in 2019. Belkind and Livni were at Check Point, where they designed network cybersecurity tools, prior to joining Torq.
The trio worked together at Symantec until around December 2019, when they left to pursue Torq.
Torq’s platform today lets IT teams create automated security workflows that integrate with their company’s existing infrastructure. Torq offers a service that employs AI — specifically large language models along the lines of OpenAI’s ChatGPT — to answer questions about SOC playbooks, the guides that help cybersecurity analysts navigate incidents.
“By connecting to the security infrastructure stack, Torq empowers organizations to remediate security events and orchestrate security processes at scale,” Smadari said. “We aim to augment human security analysts with AI-driven capabilities, allowing them to focus on higher tiers of investigation while leaving more repetitive triage, investigation and response activities to AI.”
One would hope Torq’s AI doesn’t hallucinate often, or introduce biases that end up negatively influencing a security decision. Where it concerns security, wrong decisions can be far-reaching and ruinous.
Asked about the challenges with AI today as they relate to security, Smadari admitted that Torq’s automation isn’t perfect. But he said the company’s working to address problems as they crop up.
“We are collaborating with a number of companies in the space and building risk and attack surface models, and subjecting our applications to various testing techniques,” Smadari added.
Much of the new cash from Torq’s Series C will be put toward product R&D and customer acquisition, Smadari said. In the next few months, the nearly-200-staffer, Portland-based Torq will beef up its go-to-market teams with a focus on the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
“During the past years, cybersecurity has proven itself to be one of the most resilient industries during conditions of economic uncertainty,” Smadari said. “Our company growth, and with it, the growth of our expenses, have been tightly coupled from the very beginning to revenue and customer growth.”
Bessemer Venture Partners, Notable Capital, Greenfield Partners, and Strait Capital also participated in Torq’s Series C.