網絡安全公司CrowdStrike第一次進入人們視線是在去年美國大選，他們當時率先爆料了民主黨數據外泄并被俄羅斯獲取的事件。上周三，他們表示公司已經完成了1億美元的融資，估值超過10億美元。

新一輪融資讓CrowdStrike進入了少見的“獨角獸”俱樂部，這里面都是估值達到或超過10億美元的初創公司。迄今為止，該公司募集的資金累計已有2.56億美元。

他們的新一輪融資是由加利福尼亞州帕洛阿爾托的風投公司Accel領銜，該公司也參與了CrowdStrike之前的兩輪融資。其他參與本輪融資的還包括去年成立、位于加利福尼亞州圣塔莫尼卡的投資公司March Capital Partners和澳大利亞最大的電信公司、CrowdStrike的早期顧客澳洲電信（Telstra）這兩家新投資方，以及CapitalG（之前的Google Capital）和華平投資集團（Warburg Pincus）這兩家現有投資者。

CrowdStrike成立于六年前，由于調查了世界上幾起最大的數據泄露事件，并聲稱一些國家在其中贊助了黑客團體而出名。這家公司之前協助調查了朝鮮在2014年攻擊索尼電影公司（Sony Pictures），中國在2015年策劃襲擊美國人事管理局（Office of Personnel Management）和俄羅斯情報機構去年導致美國民主黨數據外泄等案件。

CrowdStrike的共同創始人和首席執行官喬治·庫爾茨對《財富》（Fortune）表示，他在推進“云優先”的安全模式，也就是說，客戶要在電腦上安裝小型的軟件代理，收集入侵攻擊的情報，隨后CrowdStrike會根據分析結果，在產品中加入對應的防御措施。作為參照，庫爾茨談到了Salesforce基于云的訂閱戰略，它取代了曾經利用銷售軟件統治市場的巨頭Siebel。

根據CrowdStrike發言人的說法，盡管公司還不能盈利，但他們有望在下一財年做到這一點。他拒絕透露收入數據，不過表示2017年的營收運轉率已經超過1億美元——這個模糊的標準可以根據現有數據推斷年度銷售額。

自從2015年7月從以CapitalG領銜的融資中獲得1億美元后，CrowdStrike已經增加了390名員工，辦事處的數量也從美國的4個增加到全球的15個，位于歐洲、中東、亞太和拉美等新增市場。

引領近幾次融資的風險投資公司Accel的合伙人薩米爾·甘地【他也參與了Accel對電子商務公司Jet的投資，后者去年被沃爾瑪（Walmart）以超過30億美元收購】表示，他的公司“希望雙倍押注”CrowdStrike，因為他們認為該公司有潛力在市場上占據過去賽門鐵克（Symantec）和McAfee這樣統治者的地位。實際上，首席執行官庫爾茨就是McAfee的前首席技術官。公司的另一位共同創始人和首席技術官迪米特里·阿爾佩羅維奇則是McAfee威脅研究部門的前主任。

甘地表示，幾年前在他尋找終端安全市場，也就是出售軟件保護電腦的公司里的潛力股時，接觸了CrowdStrike。他說：“我坐飛機去奧蘭治縣（見庫爾茨），因為他給我留了20分鐘的時間。”他指出庫爾茨之前對他的興趣感到懷疑。雙方會面了一個半小時，最終促成了這段商業合作關系。

CrowdStrike經常給追蹤的黑客組織起一些很傻的名字，比如“奇異熊”（Fancy Bear，俄羅斯的外國軍事情報機構“格魯烏”）和“聰明小貓”（Clever Kitten，伊斯蘭國下屬的組織）。公司最近獲得的獨角獸頭銜也很符合這個風格。（財富中文網）

作譯者：嚴匡正

CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that burst onto the national scene during the U.S. election season last year when it became the first to pin a data breach at the Democratic National Committee on Russia, said on Wednesday that it has closed a $100 million funding round at a valuation exceeding $1 billion.

The new round has propelled the firm into the rarified ranks of the "unicorn" club, the group of startups valued at a billion dollars or more. The company has raised $256 million to date.

The latest fundraising was led by Accel, a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, Calif. that also participated in two of CrowdStrike's earlier funding rounds. Joining the latest round were new investors March Capital Partners, a year-old VC firm based in Santa Monica, Calif., and Telstra, Australia's biggest telecom company and an early CrowdStrike customer, as well as existing investors CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) and Warburg Pincus.

Founded six years ago, CrowdStrike has made a name for itself investigating some of the world's biggest data breaches and calling out nation state sponsored hacker groups in the process. The startup helped build a case that North Korea digitally pummeled Sony Pictures in 2014, that China orchestrated a ransacking of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in 2015, and that Russian intelligence agencies masterminded the DNC breach last year.

George Kurtz, CrowdStrike's cofounder and CEO, told Fortune that he's pushing a "cloud-first" model for security, meaning that customers subscribe to install lightweight software agents on computers that gather intelligence on inbound attacks, and then CrowdStrike bakes protections into its product based on its learnings. Kurtz looks to Salesforce's cloud-based subscription strategy, which has displaced the once-uncontested giant Siebel in the market for sales software, as a guide.

CrowdStrike, although not yet profitable, is aiming to go into the black in the next fiscal year, according to a spokesperson. The company declined to reveal its revenue figures, but said that it has an annual revenue run rate—a fuzzy yardstick that extrapolates sales for the year based on current figures—exceeding $100 million for 2017.

Since raising a prior $100 million in a round led by CapitalG in July 2015, CrowdStrike has added about 390 employees and grown from four offices in the U.S. to 15 worldwide, including in new markets such as Europe and the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and Latin America.

Sameer Gandhi, a partner at the venture capital firm Accel who spearheaded the recent funding (and who was integral in Accel's investment in the e-commerce firm Jet, which Wal-Mart acquired last year for more than $3 billion), said that his firm "wanted to double down" on CrowdStrike, believing that it has the potential to occupy a position in the market for security products that was once the sole domain of incumbents like Symantec and McAfee. In fact, CEO Kurtz is the former chief technology officer of McAfee, and his co-founder and chief technology officer Dmitri Alperovitch is McAfee's former head of threat research.

Gandhi said that he first got in touch with CrowdStrike years ago when he was scoping out candidates that might become big players in the endpoint security market, where businesses sell software to protect computers. "I flew to Orange County to meet [Kurtz] because he offered me a 20 minute slot," Gandhi said, noting that Kurtz seemed initially skeptical of Gandhi's interest. That meeting lasted an hour and a half, and eventually led to their business partnership.

CrowdStrike is known for nicknaming the hacker groups it tracks with seemingly silly names, like "Fancy Bear" (Russia's foreign military intelligence agency, the GRU) and "Clever Kitten" (affiliates of the Islamic Republic of Iran). The company's newly acquired unicorn title is, as such, a fitting one.