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In recent quarters, cybersecurity has seen venture funding pick up. Now perhaps it’ll also lead an upswing in M&A deal-making.

Credit card giant has agreed to buy threat intelligence company from for $2.65 billion. The deal represents a nice return for the private equity firm, which bought the startup in 2019 for $780 million.

The deal could be the first of many by large financial services companies looking to add threat detection and fraud-related cybersecurity features with the rise of new technologies like AI upping the risk of cyber threats.

Deal-making

While Insight bought Recorded Future in 2019, before that it had received several rounds of venture funding from the likes of , and , .

The deal is one of the largest in cyber this year, and represents the largest for any private, VC-backed (or at least at one-time VC-backed) cyber startup this year — topping ’s purchase of machine identity company for $1.5 billion in May.

So far this year there have been 64 M&A deals for VC-backed cybersecurity startups, well ahead of last year’s pace which saw a total of only 71 deals completed for startups, per SA¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ .

The current pace, however, is just shy of 2022, which saw 96 deals consummated.

Perhaps the Mastercard deal will recharge the deal-making industry.

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Related reading

• Deal-Making Involving VC-Backed Startups Picks Up Slightly, But Still Slow
• Cybersecurity Funding Jumps 144% In Q2
• CyberArk Buys Thoma Bravo-Backed Venafi For $1.5B

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