Security Startup Torq Raises Cash at $1.2 Billion Valuation

(Bloomberg) — Israeli cybersecurity startup Torq plans to announce Sunday that it has completed a $140 million financing round, bringing its valuation to $1.2 billion.

Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Torq says it is an autonomous security operations platform designed from the ground up with artificial intelligence. Using AI agents, Torq can automate repetitive tasks, such as sifting through large volumes of security alerts. This allows employees to focus on more complex and potentially dangerous issues.

“You don’t want your team to have a huge backlog and only use your team to do simple things while you automate everything,” said Ofer Smadari, the company’s CEO and co-founder.

Israeli startup TheMarker previously reported that Torq had achieved unicorn status with a new founding round without specific amounts.

Smadari said the company was founded in 2020 but changed its focus a few years after the introduction of generative AI.

“By the end of 2022, ChatGPT came into our lives and we saw the opportunity to build agents and AI functionality,” he said, adding that the company was launching an AI agent for security operations in the summer of 2023. Now “You can automate and fix everything.”

The funding round is led by Merlin Ventures, with participation from existing investors including Evolution Equity Partners, Notable Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Insight Venture Partners and Greenfield Partners.

Smadari said the company has more than 300 employees in Israel and the United States. He said he and other founders previously founded a company called Luminate Security in 2017 and sold it to Symantec Corp. for $250 million less than two years later. They launched Torq in January 2020, just before Covid-19 became a pandemic.

“We said, ‘There’s nothing better than a major worldwide crisis to start another company,'” Smadari said.

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