Cyber insurance firm Coalition lands $205M at Series E, valued at $3.5B – TechCrunch

Coalition, a San Francisco-based cybersecurity insurance company, has raised $205 million in Series E funding, valuing the pre-IPO company at more than $3.5 billion. The round was co-led by Durable Capital, T. Rowe Price, and Whale Rock Capital, with participation from the company’s existing investors.

Coalition offers businesses cybersecurity tools and insurance to help manage and mitigate cyber risk to more than 50,000 customers, doubling its customer base in the past year. It’s also seen a gross written premium run-rate of more than $240 million — an 800% increase over the previous year — because, the company tells TechCrunch, that its tech-first approach to insurance underwriting is proving to be a more successful model of risk management. The company said its policyholders experience less than one-third the claim frequency compared to other cyber insurance carriers.

“This is a dramatically different approach and it’s working as we set a new standard for an industry that has been slow to unleash the full power of data,” Joshua Motta, Coalition’s co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. “The pandemic showed that cyber risk is no longer a purely digital risk. Increasingly, a company’s industrial processes are controlled by computers, which means they’re at risk of being attacked.”

“Coalition’s policy is unique in covering the full spectrum of physical damage that can result from a cyberattack, alongside the financial and intangible damages a company can suffer,” he added.

The pandemic, and the massive increase in cyberattacks that followed, has also been a major growth driver for the company. This led to Motta being invited to the White House to a recent meeting on cybersecurity policy.

Coalition said it will use the new funding round — bringing the total amount it raised to more than $500 million — to expand into new insurance lines, to fuel its expansion into new markets, and to increase its headcount; the startup currently has 265 employees, and it’s on track to increase that to 315 employees by the end of the year.

Coalition also tells TechCrunch that this could be its final funding round before the startup prepares to go public.

“These [investors] all have impressive track records investing in long-term value creators in the public markets,” Motta says. “We certainly see Coalition following that path but we’ll make future decisions based on what’s best for our customers and partners amidst evolving market conditions.”