Blackstone reportedly leads $400m for cybersecurity firm Cyera
- ByStartupStory | December 17, 2025
Blackstone Leads $400M Round For Cyera At $9B Valuation
Blackstone is reportedly spearheading a $400 million investment in Cyera, the Israeli-founded AI cybersecurity startup, valuing the company at approximately $9 billion in one of the largest late-stage deals for data security platforms this year.
Cyera specializes in data security posture management (DSPM), an emerging category that has exploded amid the generative AI boom. Its platform uses AI to automatically discover, classify, and protect sensitive data across multi-cloud, SaaS, and on-premises environments, addressing a critical blind spot as enterprises struggle to track exploding data volumes generated by AI tools.
Founded in 2021 by Yotam Segev and Tamar Bar-Ilan—both alumni of Israel’s elite Unit 8200 signals intelligence corps—Cyera has rapidly scaled to serve Fortune 500 clients including Block, OpenAI, and Fortune 100 banks. The company reports 353% growth in enterprise customers over 18 months, expansion to 10 countries, and a workforce approaching 800.
Funding trajectory and strategic backers
This potential round follows Cyera’s blockbuster $540 million Series E in June, which doubled its valuation to $6 billion and brought total capital raised to over $1.3 billion. That raise was led by Georgian with participation from Greenoaks, Lightspeed, Sequoia Capital, Accel, Coatue, Cyberstarts, Redpoint, Sapphire Ventures, and Spark Capital.
Blackstone’s involvement signals institutional conviction in Cyera’s defensibility. The private equity giant, with $1 trillion in assets, rarely leads growth rounds but has increasingly targeted AI infrastructure. Existing VCs are expected to roll into the new financing, potentially pushing Cyera’s war chest to $1.7 billion for R&D acceleration and global sales.
Riding the DSPM and AI security wave
Cyera’s ascent mirrors the DSPM market’s maturation from niche to must-have. Traditional tools like CASBs and CWPPs focus on access; DSPM uniquely maps data flows end-to-end, flagging risks like shadow AI usage or overexposed PII. Recent expansions into unified data loss prevention (DLP) position it against Rubrik, Cohesity, and Palo Alto Networks.
AI is both tailwind and headwind: models like GPT-4o ingest vast datasets, amplifying breach risks, while Cyera’s agents autonomously remediate exposures. The firm claims 10x faster threat detection than legacy systems, appealing to CISOs overwhelmed by alerts.
Enterprise adoption has been meteoric. Block uses Cyera for real-time compliance; OpenAI leverages it for model training data hygiene. ARR growth reportedly exceeds 300% YoY, with path to $100M+ run-rate.
Competitive moat and market dynamics
Cyera differentiates through “data lineage” mapping—tracing data origins, transformations, and destinations—powered by proprietary AI models trained on billions of data events. This enables precise risk scoring and automated policy enforcement, unlike rule-based incumbents.
Rivals include Sentra, Normalyze, and Securiti.ai, but Cyera leads in hyperscaler integrations (AWS, Azure, GCP) and agentic workflows. Valuation compression from 2022 hasn’t deterred investors; DSPM TAM projections hit $20B by 2028 as regulations like GDPR 2.0 and SEC cybersecurity rules tighten.
Blackstone’s bet underscores private equity’s pivot to AI adjacencies. With hyperscalers embedding DSPM-like features (e.g., AWS Macie), Cyera counters via platform unification, serving as the “single pane of glass” for data governance.
Road ahead: Scale, IPO, global dominance
Post-funding, Cyera eyes EMEA and APAC expansion, hiring 200+ engineers, and R&D in quantum-safe encryption. An IPO looms within 18-24 months at $15B+, following Rubrik’s path.
For cybersecurity, Cyera exemplifies the shift from perimeter defense to data-centric security. As AI permeates enterprises, protecting the “crown jewels”—data—becomes paramount. Blackstone’s stake validates Cyera as infrastructure for the AI era, where data breaches cost $4.88M on average and AI risks multiply threats 300%.
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