Crunchbase reports that overall, the first quarter of 2025 marked the strongest one for venture investment since Q2 2022, and it was also the strongest quarter for startup M&A dollar volume since 2021.
Richard Seewald, founder and Managing Partner at Evolution Equity Partners, recently joined Steve Morgan, founder of Cybersecurity Ventures, on the Cybercrime Magazine Podcast for a deep dive into investing activity during the first three months of this year.
Some of the $100M+ investments covered: Cyberhaven raised $100M at a $1B valuation; ReliaQuest raised more than $500M; Island raised $250M for their secure browser; There’s been talk of a $350M raise by Chainguard in several news outlets although it hasn’t been officially announced yet; Cybereason secured a $120M investment and anyone following them knows they’ve been on a rocky road; NinjaOne pulled in a whopping $500M in Series C extensions; DreamAI focuses on National Security and they raised $100M in a Series B; Dublin, Ireland-based Tines raised $125M in a Series round; Semgrep nabbed $100M in their Series D; Flock Safety plays in the physical security and surveillance space which is increasingly intersecting with cybersecurity and they raised $275M at a $7.5B valuation; Verkada plays in the same space as Flock and they raised a $200M Series E round.
Aside from this deal flow we’ve seen numerous $50M and up investments in Q1. “This almost feels like I’m back in 2021, which was a record year for our industry – but it’s too early to know what the rest of 2025 holds,” said Morgan.
Morgan and Seewald noted that the Wall Street Journal recently reported that cybersecurity investors expect more mergers in 2025, more so than new IPOs. Google’s parent Alphabet recently announced it is acquiring Wiz for $32B, which is up from the $23B deal the two companies abandoned last year.