这家调查黑客的公司成为最新的一只独角兽

网络安全公司CrowdStrike第一次进入人们视线是在去年美国大选，他们当时率先爆料了民主党数据外泄并被俄罗斯获取的事件。上周三，他们表示公司已经完成了1亿美元的融资，估值超过10亿美元。

新一轮融资让CrowdStrike进入了少见的“独角兽”俱乐部，这里面都是估值达到或超过10亿美元的初创公司。迄今为止，该公司募集的资金累计已有2.56亿美元。

他们的新一轮融资是由加利福尼亚州帕洛阿尔托的风投公司Accel领衔，该公司也参与了CrowdStrike之前的两轮融资。其他参与本轮融资的还包括去年成立、位于加利福尼亚州圣塔莫尼卡的投资公司March Capital Partners和澳大利亚最大的电信公司、CrowdStrike的早期顾客澳洲电信（Telstra）这两家新投资方，以及CapitalG（之前的Google Capital）和华平投资集团（Warburg Pincus）这两家现有投资者。

CrowdStrike成立于六年前，由于调查了世界上几起最大的数据泄露事件，并声称一些国家在其中赞助了黑客团体而出名。这家公司之前协助调查了朝鲜在2014年攻击索尼电影公司（Sony Pictures），中国在2015年策划袭击美国人事管理局（Office of Personnel Management）和俄罗斯情报机构去年导致美国民主党数据外泄等案件。

CrowdStrike的共同创始人和首席执行官乔治·库尔茨对《财富》（Fortune）表示，他在推进“云优先”的安全模式，也就是说，客户要在电脑上安装小型的软件代理，收集入侵攻击的情报，随后CrowdStrike会根据分析结果，在产品中加入对应的防御措施。作为参照，库尔茨谈到了Salesforce基于云的订阅战略，它取代了曾经利用销售软件统治市场的巨头Siebel。

根据CrowdStrike发言人的说法，尽管公司还不能盈利，但他们有望在下一财年做到这一点。他拒绝透露收入数据，不过表示2017年的营收运转率已经超过1亿美元——这个模糊的标准可以根据现有数据推断年度销售额。

自从2015年7月从以CapitalG领衔的融资中获得1亿美元后，CrowdStrike已经增加了390名员工，办事处的数量也从美国的4个增加到全球的15个，位于欧洲、中东、亚太和拉美等新增市场。

引领近几次融资的风险投资公司Accel的合伙人萨米尔·甘地【他也参与了Accel对电子商务公司Jet的投资，后者去年被沃尔玛（Walmart）以超过30亿美元收购】表示，他的公司“希望双倍押注”CrowdStrike，因为他们认为该公司有潜力在市场上占据过去赛门铁克（Symantec）和McAfee这样统治者的地位。实际上，首席执行官库尔茨就是McAfee的前首席技术官。公司的另一位共同创始人和首席技术官迪米特里·阿尔佩罗维奇则是McAfee威胁研究部门的前主任。

甘地表示，几年前在他寻找终端安全市场，也就是出售软件保护电脑的公司里的潜力股时，接触了CrowdStrike。他说：“我坐飞机去奥兰治县（见库尔茨），因为他给我留了20分钟的时间。”他指出库尔茨之前对他的兴趣感到怀疑。双方会面了一个半小时，最终促成了这段商业合作关系。

CrowdStrike经常给追踪的黑客组织起一些很傻的名字，比如“奇异熊”（Fancy Bear，俄罗斯的外国军事情报机构“格鲁乌”）和“聪明小猫”（Clever Kitten，伊斯兰国下属的组织）。公司最近获得的独角兽头衔也很符合这个风格。（财富中文网）

作译者：严匡正

CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that burst onto the national scene during the U.S. election season last year when it became the first to pin a data breach at the Democratic National Committee on Russia, said on Wednesday that it has closed a $100 million funding round at a valuation exceeding $1 billion.

The new round has propelled the firm into the rarified ranks of the "unicorn" club, the group of startups valued at a billion dollars or more. The company has raised $256 million to date.

The latest fundraising was led by Accel, a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, Calif. that also participated in two of CrowdStrike's earlier funding rounds. Joining the latest round were new investors March Capital Partners, a year-old VC firm based in Santa Monica, Calif., and Telstra, Australia's biggest telecom company and an early CrowdStrike customer, as well as existing investors CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) and Warburg Pincus.

Founded six years ago, CrowdStrike has made a name for itself investigating some of the world's biggest data breaches and calling out nation state sponsored hacker groups in the process. The startup helped build a case that North Korea digitally pummeled Sony Pictures in 2014, that China orchestrated a ransacking of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in 2015, and that Russian intelligence agencies masterminded the DNC breach last year.

George Kurtz, CrowdStrike's cofounder and CEO, told Fortune that he's pushing a "cloud-first" model for security, meaning that customers subscribe to install lightweight software agents on computers that gather intelligence on inbound attacks, and then CrowdStrike bakes protections into its product based on its learnings. Kurtz looks to Salesforce's cloud-based subscription strategy, which has displaced the once-uncontested giant Siebel in the market for sales software, as a guide.

CrowdStrike, although not yet profitable, is aiming to go into the black in the next fiscal year, according to a spokesperson. The company declined to reveal its revenue figures, but said that it has an annual revenue run rate—a fuzzy yardstick that extrapolates sales for the year based on current figures—exceeding $100 million for 2017.

Since raising a prior $100 million in a round led by CapitalG in July 2015, CrowdStrike has added about 390 employees and grown from four offices in the U.S. to 15 worldwide, including in new markets such as Europe and the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and Latin America.

Sameer Gandhi, a partner at the venture capital firm Accel who spearheaded the recent funding (and who was integral in Accel's investment in the e-commerce firm Jet, which Wal-Mart acquired last year for more than $3 billion), said that his firm "wanted to double down" on CrowdStrike, believing that it has the potential to occupy a position in the market for security products that was once the sole domain of incumbents like Symantec and McAfee. In fact, CEO Kurtz is the former chief technology officer of McAfee, and his co-founder and chief technology officer Dmitri Alperovitch is McAfee's former head of threat research.

Gandhi said that he first got in touch with CrowdStrike years ago when he was scoping out candidates that might become big players in the endpoint security market, where businesses sell software to protect computers. "I flew to Orange County to meet [Kurtz] because he offered me a 20 minute slot," Gandhi said, noting that Kurtz seemed initially skeptical of Gandhi's interest. That meeting lasted an hour and a half, and eventually led to their business partnership.

CrowdStrike is known for nicknaming the hacker groups it tracks with seemingly silly names, like "Fancy Bear" (Russia's foreign military intelligence agency, the GRU) and "Clever Kitten" (affiliates of the Islamic Republic of Iran). The company's newly acquired unicorn title is, as such, a fitting one.