By Jane Lanhee Lee
(Reuters) – Toronto-based cyber security startup 1Password on Wednesday said it raised $650 million in its latest round of funding led by ICONIQ Growth and is now valued at $6.8 billion.
The massive funding comes as the pandemic driven work-from-home trend nears two years and is creating extra challenges for companies to keep data safe.
Jeff Shiner, 1Password CEO, said in that period the company has more than tripled its head count to about 570 and expects to double that again this year. The funds raised will also be used for strategic acquisitions to help grow the business, he said.
1Password’s technology makes it easier for employees to log into their company systems but also gives companies visibility into what apps employees are downloading without permission from their IT teams. When employees leave the company the tech makes it easy to ensure they don’t keep access to the company systems.
“Over the last couple of years, everybody has a higher level of inherent stress just from what’s going on in the world. And I think we’re starting to see some of the implications of that from a security point of view,” said Shiner.
In October, 1Password surveyed 2,500 North American adults who work full-time and whose work is conducted primarily at a computer and the results showed that burned-out employees are a third less likely to follow companies’ security guidelines than other employees, including downloading unapproved apps.
1Password said Tiger Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Accel also joined this funding round.
(Reporting By Jane Lanhee Lee; editing by Richard Pullin)
