Australia cybersecurity start-up raises $20m

Local investors Main Sequence and Artesian also participated. Artesian is investing via a AUD 50m (USD 33.3m) fund set up in 2020 with the South Australian state government. That fund contributed to a AUD 4m seed round in 2019 alongside Main Sequence and Blue Sky Private Equity.

Fivecast was founded in 2017 as a collaboration between government agencies and research institutions focused on artificial intelligence (AI) in national defence, intelligence, police, and border security contexts. Its core market is the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US.

The company says its software enables the targeted collection and risk analysis of publicly available information for specific use cases, such as identifying extremists, terrorists, drug trafficking and organised crime. Corporate security and financial intelligence are considered growth areas.

The fresh capital will support a buildout of operations and business in the Five Eyes countries, especially Australia, the UK, and US. This will include the recruitment of tradecraft experts, developers, and sales and marketing personnel.

“We see OSINT [open-source intelligence] as a large and emerging sector driven by the explosion of publicly available content, now growing ever-larger via the newly accessible AI-generated multimedia content platforms,” Alex Doll, a managing partner at Ten Eleven, said in a statement.

“Governments, law enforcement, and other organizations need a faster and easier way to collect and analyse this open-source data. Fivecast's advanced collection methods and AI-supported analysis tools bypass current manual data analysis processes to meet this important need.”

This is Ten Eleven’s second investment in Australia. The VC firm, set up in 2014 by cybersecurity professionals, has backed two rounds for Sydney-based bot attack specialist Kasada, including a USD 23m round in late 2021. Main Sequence was an early backer of Kasada.

“Deep tech is boundless in its ability to create safer societies through research, data and advanced capabilities that tackle among the most pressing challenges we face,” Martin Duursma, a partner at Main Sequence, added.

“Fivecast incorporates these principles to address the growing spectrum of global threats by deciphering almost endless troves of publicly available data and applying AI to help uncover insights essential to protecting communities and organizations. It's yet another example of Australian deep-tech innovation making a positive, large-scale impact on the world.”

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Technology
• Media
• Early-stage
• Australia
• Main Sequence Ventures
• Artesian
• Cybersecurity