Redmond-based cybersecurity startup Averlon launched from stealth Thursday with an $8 million seed round.
Averlon co-founder and CEO Sunil Gottumukkala said the company has about 12 employees and plans to double the size of its team over the next year. He added that roughly half of the employees are based in the Seattle area, but the company also has workers in India and Europe.
"We'll continue, most likely, looking for opportunities to hire in the same places, but we know, especially in the security industry, talent is very sought after," Gottumukkala said. "So we'll hire talent where they're available."
Averlon has a coworking space in Thinkspace Redmond but is looking for a more permanent office on the Eastside, likely Bellevue or Kirkland.
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Averlon, founded in 2022, helps cybersecurity teams identify which alerts are the most important to address when stopping attackers. Gottumukkala said these employees are often inundated with alerts and separating truly important notifications from the rest can be overwhelming. Averlon's clients include UiPath and Vimeo.
Gottumukkala said most of the team is engineers and researchers. With the seed funding, Averlon plans to start hiring sales and marketing roles while still adding to its engineering team. The company has raised $10.5 million in total.
Gottumukkala was previously the senior vice president of cybersecurity at Salesforce, where he spent more than five years. He spent more than 16 years at Microsoft before that.
Vishal Agarwal, Averlon's co-founder and chief technology officer, also spent more than five years at Salesforce before launching the startup. He spent more than 16 years at Microsoft before that.
Seattle-based Voyager Capital led the seed round, while Salesforce Ventures and Outpost Ventures participated. Voyager has also invested in the agriculture tech company Carbon Robotics and the caller ID startup Hiya.
According to Gottumukkala, many of Averlon's design partners converted into paying clients.
"We have general availability for Amazon Web Services support," Gottumukkala said. "We are coming up with Azure support in the near future and the rest of the public clouds later in the year."
