Exclusive: NY-based Springcoast Partners led the round, joined by Australia’s Square Peg, which has partnered with the firm since inception, and US firms August Capital and Pelion Venture Partners.
Twenty-three years ago, Alan Sharp-Paul and Mike Baukes were engineers at investment firm Colonial First State in Sydney. Fast forward to today, and the co-founders of Aussie cybersecurity firm UpGuard are celebrating a $105 million Series C raise.
“We make it easy to automatically remediate, and prioritise technology issues that are security and risk-centric, in a language that is easy for business people to understand,” UpGuard’s CEO Baukes tells Forbes Australia.
“We specialise in bringing these two fields together. Historically companies have had very distinct practices around risk and security and it’s been difficult for non-technical people to comprehend the risks technology poses. Foundationally, it’s a huge barrier for growth and innovation.”
Solving that problem is what drove Baukes and Sharp-Paul to start UpGuard in 2012.
“We saw that risk and security was a problem that wasn’t addressed; especially in how companies access risk for security breaches. We then moved to the States and pivoted the business in 2018 to grow faster and innovate on security posture, including attack surface management and vendor risk.”
Eight years on, the Hobart and Mountain View California-dual headquartered UpGuard processes 100 billion risk signals each day on behalf of 50,000 organisations spread across almost 100 countries, according to the company. Enhanced capability provided by AI is the key to managing that many potential cybersecurity incidents in an ‘increasingly complex threat landscape.’
“We started rewriting our products’ capabilities using modern AI about two years ago,” says Baukes. “All new products are spec’d and designed using AI and all the teams are heavily using AI as part of the development process. This means we are able to process huge amounts of data and respond to it in real time.”
Holger Staude is the managing partner of Springcoast, which led the Series C raise.
“UpGuard has proven its ability to execute and achieve significant scale and capital efficiency in a critical market, and they have the vision and technology to achieve even more,” says New York-based Staude.
The funds will be used for M&A, to expand UpGuard’s AI-powered Cyber Risk Posture Management platform, and to scale the company globally.
Baukes and Sharp-Paul went through then-nascent Australian accelerator Startmate in 2012. To date, UpGuard is the most successful startup in Startmate’s history, valued north of $400 million in 2024.
“Mike and Alan came through Startmate’s Accelerator with a bold view of how cybersecurity should work, simpler, clearer and built for a digital first world,” Startmate CEO Phoebe Pincus tells Forbes Australia.
“Fourteen years on, seeing UpGuard become the most valuable company in our portfolio and raise $105 million is incredibly special. It is testament to long-term vision, relentless execution, and the ability to build a global, category-defining company from Australia.”
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