Portland security automation company Torq raised $50 million in a Series B round led by private equity firm Insight Partners.
Also participating in the round was new investor cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, as well as existing investors GGV Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners. The company has raised a total of $78 million since it was founded last year.
The company also counts two other locations, in New York and Tel Aviv, Israel. Portland is home to the startup’s go-to-market leaders in marketing, field engineering and customer success, said Portland-based COO Brian Lake.
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Torq is the new brand for what had been called StackPulse. The company emerged in early 2021 as a site reliability platform.
However, as is the case in startups, the company saw how customers were using the product and made a pivot. The majority of customers were using StackPulse for security teams. Torq is built off the StackPulse technology and is now a no-code automation platform for security teams. This means that no matter a user’s technical expertise they can build automated workflows across security infrastructure and communication tools.
The product helps security teams speed threat response and remediation, and since the pivot, demand for the product has increased 900%, according to the company. Customers include Fortune 100 companies as well as startups.
“Torq’s accelerated customer growth proves that a new approach to automaton is essential for security teams seeking to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow,” said co-founder and CEO Ofer Smardari, in a written statement. “We’re proud and humbled by the trust our customers place in us, and to be joined by Insight Partners and SentinelOne as we help security teams move faster and keep their organizations safer.”
Locally, the company has doubled its Portland employees this year to 10 and plans to double or triple the local office size again next year.
The three founders Smardari, Leonid Belkind and Eldad Livini previously built a cloud-native security company called Luminate Security, which was acquired by Symantec in 2019. The Portland executive leaders include Lake, and Joshua Thorngren, vice president of growth. Both Lake and Thorngren are alums of Portland companies Puppet and Twistlock, the latter of which was acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2019.
Investor Insight Partners has several connections to Portland in its portfolio. The firm is an investor in Portland-based Jama Software as well as Cloudbolt Software, which is based in Portland and Rockville, Maryland. It’s also a backer of Showpad, which has an office locally.
“Torq’s rapid success is a testament to how the platform makes it easier for security teams to deliver better protection across every aspect of the business” said Steve Ward, managing director at Insight Partners in a written statement. “With its intuitive product and experienced team, Torq is quickly becoming a leader in the industry. We’re thrilled to partner with the Torq team as they continue to grow.”
