Rockwell Automation was the co-leader of a $400 million funding round for cybersecurity software firm Claroty, which serves the industrial, health care and enterprise markets.
The other co-lead investors of the round were SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Bessemer Venture Partners, Schneider Electric and Standard Investments.
The latest investment by Milwaukee-based Rockwell (NYSE: ROK) builds upon the company’s existing relationship with Claroty, as Rockwell has installed Claroty software at 300 Rockwell customer sites, said Rockwell spokeswoman Marci Pelzer. Rockwell uses Claroty for customers in several industries: life science, food and beverage, consumer packaged goods, electric vehicles and oil and gas, she said.
Rockwell has been investing in and partnering with Claroty since 2017 and holds a small ownership stake, Pelzer said. Rockwell also invested in a Series D funding round with Claroty in June and a Series C round in May 2018, Pelzer said.
Claroty has been based in New York City since 2017 when it relocated its offices from Tel Aviv, Israel.
"As a longstanding investor, partner, and customer of Claroty, we've known for years that the company has a best-in-class platform for protecting industrial and critical infrastructure environments from cyber attacks," Rockwell chairman and CEO Blake Moret said in a press release.
The latest funding round for Claroty coincides with the company's intent to acquire Medigate, a health care Internet of Things security company. Medigate has headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, and has a research-and-development office in Tel Aviv.
Claroty CEO Yaniv Vardi called the pending acquisition of Medigate “a giant leap forward” in Claroty’s mission to secure the universe of Internet of Things platform XIoT.
“We envision a future where cyber and physical worlds safely connect to support our lives, and with such strong backing from some of the world’s foremost technology investors, we have the resources we need to make this vision a reality,” Vardi said in a press release.
