Cloud Security Startup Dazz, Co-Founded By Ex-Microsoft GM, Raises $60M

Cybersecurity startup Dazz, a company founded by an ex-Microsoft general manager and top Israeli cybersecurity experts, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $60 million in a new funding round.

Venture capital firms participating in the funding round include Insight Partners (Steve Ward), Greylock (Asheem Chandna and Sarah Guo), Index Ventures (Shardul Shah), and Cyberstarts (Gili Raanan), a statement from the company said.

The company said it will expand its engineering team and build a go-to-market organization in the United States with offices in Palo Alto and New York.

Founded in September 2021, Dazz addresses the urgent security need created by the rapid adoption of cloud computing, which has been accelerated by the pandemic. Dazz solves vulnerabilities and prevents risks in cloud development environments with untreated security matters.

“Our vision is to solve a critical set of problems while improving the effectiveness of collaboration between security teams and their business partners,” said founder and CEO Merav Bahat. “To do that, even before writing a single line of code, our team worked closely with customers, and we continue to listen and understand their concerns and pains.”

Bahat served as the general manager of the Cloud Security Business for Microsoft and was also the Deputy CEO of Microsoft Israel R&D.  She co-founded the company with CTO, Tomer Schwartz and VP R&D, Yuval Ofir, who are acclaimed cybersecurity leaders with decades of combined experience solving cloud and cybersecurity challenges across global enterprises.

Schwartz co-founded IoT security leader Armis, a company acquired by Insight Partners early last year. He was also head of research at Adallom, and founded the Microsoft Security Response Center in Israel. Ofir, headed R&D at industrial cybersecurity leader Claroty and was a leader in the prestigious Israeli Defense Forces intelligence unit 8200.

Dazz already has 30 employees, which are said to be among the top engineering talent in Israel. The company plans to use the new funds to expand the team to 50.  It also plans to use the funds to build a go-to-market and operations organization of similar size, including sales, marketing, customer success, and operations in the United States, targeting Fortune 500 and fast-growing tech companies.

“Enterprises are accelerating their move to the cloud,” said Asheem Chandna, Partner at Greylock. “Dazz bridges the gap between developers and production, helping teams rapidly remediate and resolve cloud security issues.”

“Dazz’s vision of solving a critical set of cybersecurity problems related to the development and cloud environments and the need for continuous deployment for their business partners makes it a standout platform in the enterprise space,” said Steve Ward, Managing Director at Insight Partners.

Ward will join the board at the company.