Israeli IoT Security Firm Armis Said To Be Acquired For Approximately $1B

The Israeli-founded IoT security platform Armis is set to be acquired by NY-based Insight Partners for approximately $1 billion, CTech by Calcalist first reported on Monday. CTech had reported earlier in the day that talks were underway for the acquisition at a company valuation of between $800 million and $1.2 billion. The report cited two unnamed sources.

Insight Partners had participated in a Series C funding round of $65 million for Armis last April, bringing the total capital raised by the company to over $110 million. The round was led by Sequoia Capital. Previous investors include Bain Capital and Red Dot Capital.

When finalized, the agreement will represent the first billion-dollar exit for an Israeli company in 2020.

Armis was founded in 2015 by Nadir Izrael, Tomer Schwartz, and Yevgeny Dibrov, and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California and Tel Aviv. Armis says its solution eliminates IoT security blind spots, letting enterprises embrace IoT as part of their digital transformation and develop full visibility and control over the IoT devices that operate within their networks. Armis’ security solution analyzes and classifies these devices in order to identify risks or potential cyber attacks.

The company’s customers have included Mondelēz, Sysco Foods, Allergan and Samsung Research America.

In 2017, Armis alerted tech giants Google and Amazon of potential cyber breaches in their smart speaker products with vulnerabilities set to affect over 20 million users at the time. Armis researchers had uncovered an exploit over Bluetooth that would allow hackers to take over devices and spread malware. Both companies released security updates for their respective Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa devices.

Google had since invested several million in Armis, CTech by Calcalist reported in November.