Who are the top investors in cybersecurity?
In our cybersecurity market deck, you will find everything you need to understand the market
SUMMARY
Cyberstarts, Insight Partners, Accel and Sequoia are the top investors in cybersecurity today, with Cyberstarts strongest at company formation and Insight strongest once scale matters.
The ranking changes sharply depending on stage. Cyberstarts wins on concentrated day-one hits, while Insight wins on breadth, capital and the ability to keep supporting companies after the checks become very large.
Cybersecurity is still absorbing serious venture capital, but the money is increasingly concentrated. AI security alone captured roughly 46% of cybersecurity financing dollars in Momentum Cyber’s first-quarter 2026 dataset, so being active in the right subcategories matters more than simply doing lots of cyber deals.
Cyberstarts stands out because its portfolio is small enough that Wiz, Cyera and Island cannot be explained by brute-force deal volume. Its record says more about selection than a large fund appearing in dozens of later rounds.
Insight is the strongest counterexample to the idea that specialist funds always have the edge. Its observed deal count, roughly $5 billion-plus of cyber capital and current portfolio breadth make it unusually hard to dislodge once companies reach scale.
Accel’s advantage is durability across cycles. CrowdStrike and Snyk came from different security eras, yet the firm kept finding strong companies early and stayed invested through later rounds instead of handing the relationship off.
Sequoia is moving earlier than a classic generalist fund used to. Its pre-product work with Wiz and newer bets in AI-native security show how much competition has shifted toward company formation, where the best teams can now raise enormous rounds before conventional traction appears.
The specialist field just below the top four is unusually strong. Ten Eleven brings lifecycle breadth, YL Ventures brings a long Israeli seed record, SYN is unusually concentrated in agentic security, Bessemer is leaning hard into AI security, and Evolution has a clearer growth-stage identity than most cyber-focused investors.
Israel remains central to the ranking, but the investor mix is changing. Global funds are now showing up earlier in Israeli cyber seed rounds, which raises the bar for local specialists and makes access to founders before product-market fit even more valuable.
The practical conclusion is stage-specific: choose Cyberstarts if the goal is to find or form the next major cybersecurity company before it is obvious, and choose Insight if the goal is to finance a proven winner through global scale.
This market map, featured in our cybersecurity market deck, highlights top companies and startups in the cybersecurity market
Who Are the Top Investors in Cybersecurity?
What makes a cybersecurity investor “top” today?
For us, a top cybersecurity investor is one that keeps getting into strong companies early, can keep funding them as they grow, and is still winning competitive deals today.
That definition separates several kinds of investors that often get mixed together. Insight Partners can deploy far more money than a seed specialist. Cyberstarts can own meaningful stakes before a company has much more than a founding team. Accel can invest early and keep writing checks for years. Evolution Equity Partners tends to become more important once a company is already scaling.
Private fund returns would be the cleanest comparison, but those numbers are rarely disclosed in a way that lets us compare firms properly. So we looked at what we can actually observe: how often investors appear in cybersecurity financings, when they enter, what happened to the companies they backed, whether they kept their ownership through later rounds, and what they have been investing in lately.
We also give more credit to difficult decisions. Investing before product-market fit tells us more about an investor’s ability to pick companies than joining a $300 million round once the winner is obvious.
That produces a fairly clear top group today: Cyberstarts, Insight Partners, Accel and Sequoia. The order changes depending on whether we care most about seed investing, overall scale or long-term company building.
Is cybersecurity still attracting serious venture money?
Yes. Cybersecurity funding is still running at historically high levels, even though the market cooled somewhat after an unusually strong start to the year.
Crunchbase counted $10.6 billion invested globally in security and privacy startups during the first half of 2026. The first quarter alone brought roughly $4.9 billion across just under 200 rounds, including 13 financings of at least $100 million.
The second quarter was softer. Crunchbase counted around $4.4 billion in seed-through-growth funding, roughly 30% below both the previous quarter and the year-earlier period. We read that as cooling from a very strong level rather than investors leaving cybersecurity.
Momentum Cyber found something more interesting underneath the headline total. AI-security companies captured 46% of all cybersecurity financing dollars during the first quarter, or about $1.7 billion. Ten rounds of at least $100 million accounted for $1.8 billion between them.
So the current market is quite concentrated. Investors are still spending heavily, but a disproportionate amount of money is going into companies that can plausibly become large platforms around AI security, identity, data security and autonomous security operations.
As this chart shows, and as featured in our cybersecurity market deck, search interest in cybersecurity has been trending upward
Is Insight Partners the strongest all-around cybersecurity investor?
Insight Partners is currently the strongest all-around cybersecurity investor if we combine deal volume, capital available and the ability to keep backing companies through growth.
The clearest historical comparison comes from D.A. Davidson’s cybersecurity investor analysis using Capital IQ and PitchBook data through the first quarter of 2025. Insight had completed 56 cybersecurity investments since 2017. Accel was second with 42, while Sequoia, Forgepoint and Ten Eleven each had 34.
The gap also showed up in dollars. D.A. Davidson calculated roughly $4.6 billion of known cybersecurity investment volume for Insight, compared with $3.2 billion for Accel and Sequoia and $3.1 billion for Lightspeed.
Insight says its own cybersecurity portfolio now covers more than 75 companies and more than $5 billion of invested capital. Its current portfolio stretches from cloud and infrastructure security to identity, privacy, exposure management and security operations.
The activity has continued lately. Insight led a $200 million investment in SPUR, led a $50 million Series C in Inforcer and joined Forgepoint in DataBahn’s $40 million Series B. Those are three different parts of the market, which is exactly why Insight is difficult to beat on breadth.
What Insight does especially well is keep showing up after a company has become large enough to require serious capital. It backed SentinelOne through multiple private rounds before the company went public and built substantial positions in companies such as Armis, Island, OneTrust, Torq and Sysdig.
| Investor | Cyber deals since 2017 in D.A. Davidson data | Known capital deployed |
|---|---|---|
| Insight Partners | 56 | $4.6B |
| Accel | 42 | $3.2B |
| Sequoia Capital | 34 | $3.2B |
| Ten Eleven Ventures | 34 | $740M |
| Forgepoint Capital | 34 | $680M |
| Lightspeed Venture Partners | 27 | $3.1B |
| Andreessen Horowitz | 20 | $1.8B |
| Bessemer Venture Partners | 19 | $1.5B |
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest cybersecurity market report.
Is Cyberstarts the best cybersecurity seed investor right now?
Cyberstarts is our pick for the best pure cybersecurity seed investor today because its hit rate at company formation is unusually hard to match.
The fund’s strongest example remains Wiz. Cyberstarts partnered with the founders on day one and invested roughly $6 million at seed. Google later agreed to buy Wiz for $32 billion.
Cyera gives us a second independent test. Cyberstarts backed the founders in 2021, and the company has since raised $600 million at a $12 billion valuation. Island gives us a third: Cyberstarts entered the enterprise-browser company early, well before it reached a multibillion-dollar valuation.
Three giant outcomes would already make Cyberstarts unusual. The current portfolio makes the case stronger.
A Security recently launched after raising $37 million, including a $5 million seed led by Cyberstarts followed only five months later by a $32 million round led by Cyberstarts and Lightspeed. NewCore came out of stealth with $66 million from Cyberstarts, Index Ventures and Evolution Equity Partners to build identity infrastructure for humans and AI agents. Glow emerged with $180 million of funding and a $1.2 billion valuation, with Cyberstarts and Sequoia among the investors.
Cyberstarts also participated in Onyx Security before Bessemer later led the company’s $113 million Series B.
The portfolio is small enough that those wins cannot be explained by simply investing in everything. Cyberstarts says it has partnered with only a few dozen companies since launching in 2018.
This chart, included in our cybersecurity market deck, illustrates yearly VC funding for cybersecurity startups
Is Accel still one of the best cybersecurity investors?
Yes. Accel remains one of the best cybersecurity investors because it has repeatedly backed category leaders early and then stayed involved while they became much larger companies.
CrowdStrike is still the clearest proof. Accel first invested in 2013 and then led or co-led every private financing round before the IPO. That gave Accel exposure to the company long before cloud-delivered endpoint security became an obvious category.
The pattern later repeated with Snyk. Accel invested at Series A in 2018 and continued backing the company as developer-first application security became a major enterprise market.
More recently, Accel has been deeply involved in the Israeli cybersecurity wave. It entered Cyera at Series A, backed Oasis Security and has continued participating in large later rounds across the sector. Oasis subsequently agreed to be acquired for about $1 billion, showing that Accel can still get into valuable companies before the growth stage.
Accel has also kept finding new deals rather than leaning on old portfolio logos. One recent example is Twenty, which raised $100 million with Accel leading the financing.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest cybersecurity market report.
Is Sequoia still getting into the best cybersecurity companies early?
Yes. Sequoia is still one of the strongest generalist investors at getting into cybersecurity companies before the market has fully decided who will win.
Its involvement with Wiz shows the style clearly. Sequoia knew the founding team from Adallom and backed the new company before Wiz had fully settled on the product that eventually made it famous.
Sequoia has repeated that early approach with Island and other Israeli security companies. More recently, it has moved aggressively into AI-native security.
Glow is a good example. The endpoint-security company emerged from stealth with $180 million and a $1.2 billion valuation, with Sequoia and Cyberstarts among the investors. Corma is another. Sequoia led a $60 million seed round for a company building foundation models specifically for cyber defense.
Those are unusually large early rounds, and they show how competitive the market has become. Generalist funds can no longer assume that they will wait until Series A, see some revenue and then buy their way into the strongest cybersecurity companies.
YL Ventures’ latest research on Israeli cybersecurity shows the same shift at ecosystem level. Global investors participated in 46 Israeli cyber seed rounds in 2025, compared with 37 involving Israeli investors. Two years earlier, Israeli investors had participated in twice as many seed rounds as global investors.
This chart, included in our cybersecurity market deck, breaks down CrowdStrike’s playbook in cybersecurity
Is YL Ventures still an elite cybersecurity seed fund?
YL Ventures is still one of the best cybersecurity seed investors, especially for Israeli founders, even though Cyberstarts has produced the flashier recent megawinners.
YL has been investing almost exclusively in cybersecurity for close to two decades and currently manages about $800 million. That gives the firm a much longer specialist history than most of the funds now competing for Israeli seed rounds.
Its older portfolio includes Axonius, Orca Security and Twistlock. Those companies came from different product cycles: cyber-asset management, cloud security and container security. Twistlock was ultimately acquired by Palo Alto Networks.
The newer portfolio shows that YL is still finding companies in emerging categories. Native Security raised $42 million around cloud-security architecture. Hush Security recently raised $30 million to address AI-agent governance, with Akamai joining as a strategic investor.
YL is also deliberately concentrated. When it announced its $400 million fifth fund, the firm said it expected to lead roughly ten seed investments rather than spread the money across dozens of companies.
Are Ten Eleven Ventures and SYN Ventures catching the older cyber funds?
Ten Eleven Ventures is already a top-tier cybersecurity specialist by scale, while SYN Ventures is moving up the ranking faster than almost any newer fund.
Ten Eleven now manages roughly $1 billion and says it has invested in more than 70 cybersecurity companies across 13 countries. The important part is how active it still is.
Its recent portfolio includes Bloom Security, which launched with a $20 million seed round around securing AI-native endpoints; Fig Security, which raised $38 million across seed and Series A financings; Jazz, which has raised $61 million around AI-native data-loss prevention; and Variance, which raised $21.5 million to automate risk and compliance workflows with AI agents.
D.A. Davidson’s earlier data already showed 27 Ten Eleven investments between 2021 and early 2025, close to Insight’s 36 over the same period despite Ten Eleven operating with much less capital. The newer deals show that pace has continued.
SYN Ventures is younger. It launched in 2021 and now manages around $900 million, so almost its entire portfolio was built during the current cloud, identity and AI-security era.
The firm has been particularly aggressive around AI agents. It backed Arcade at Series A to control what production AI agents are allowed to do. Its 2026 portfolio also includes CodeIntegrity, which controls how enterprise data influences agent actions; Nullify, which is building autonomous product-security agents; and Balance Theory, which applies AI to cybersecurity investment and program decisions.
| Investor | Current scale | What stands out now |
|---|---|---|
| Ten Eleven Ventures | About $1B AUM, 70+ cyber companies | High deal pace across seed through growth |
| SYN Ventures | About $900M AUM | Heavy concentration in AI-agent and autonomous security |
| YL Ventures | About $800M AUM | Selective Israeli seed investing |
| Cyberstarts | Smaller, highly concentrated portfolio | Exceptional company-formation hit rate |
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest cybersecurity market report.
This chart, included in our cybersecurity market deck, illustrates yearly funding for cybersecurity startups
Who is strongest at growth-stage cybersecurity investing?
Insight Partners is the strongest overall growth investor in cybersecurity, while Evolution Equity Partners currently has the clearest specialist claim.
Evolution’s latest Cyera investment is a good example of the role it plays. The firm led a $600 million Series G that valued the data-security company at $12 billion. That is a very different investment from trying to identify a team at seed: Evolution was underwriting whether an already large cybersecurity company could become much larger.
The firm manages a $1.1 billion technology growth fund focused heavily on cybersecurity and typically writes checks large enough to matter in later-stage financings. Its portfolio also includes Armis, Torq and other scaled security companies.
Evolution has started appearing earlier when the opportunity fits its thesis. It joined Cyberstarts and Index Ventures in NewCore’s $66 million launch financing, giving it exposure to a company at formation rather than waiting for a conventional growth round.
Lightspeed belongs in this conversation as well. D.A. Davidson counted roughly $3.1 billion of known cybersecurity investment volume for Lightspeed since 2017, almost as much as Accel and Sequoia. The firm has backed companies across cloud, data and infrastructure security and can support very large rounds.
There are also growth investors that matter enormously on specific deals without having the same breadth across cybersecurity. Blackstone led a $400 million financing earlier in Cyera’s development. Summit Partners recently announced a strategic investment of more than $1 billion in Keyfactor, one of the largest machine-identity and cryptographic-security transactions in the market.
Who is winning AI-security investing right now?
Bessemer, Cyberstarts, SYN Ventures and Sequoia currently have the most interesting early positions in AI security, while Evolution is becoming important once those companies reach scale.
The category is already large enough to change how we rank cybersecurity investors. Momentum Cyber counted roughly $1.7 billion of AI-security financing in the first quarter alone, equal to 46% of all cyber financing dollars in its dataset.
Bessemer has become particularly aggressive lately. It led Onyx Security’s $113 million Series B after the company said revenue had quadrupled in four months since emerging from stealth. Bessemer also backed Act Security from seed through Series A around proactive cloud security, invested in Neo around endpoint risks created by AI agents and backed QIZ Security around post-quantum cryptographic management.
That recent pace sits on top of a much older cybersecurity franchise. Bessemer says it has made more than 43 cyber investments, producing nine IPOs and more than 23 acquisitions.
SYN is attacking the same shift from several directions. Arcade handles authorization for agent actions. CodeIntegrity focuses on how agents use enterprise data. Helmet Security controls agent communications. Terra Security uses autonomous agents for penetration testing.
Cyberstarts is forming companies around AI-era identity, autonomous defense and agent governance. Sequoia is placing larger early bets on endpoint security and cyber-specific foundation models.
We are less confident about who will ultimately win this category than we are about the overall cybersecurity ranking. Most of these companies are still young, and AI security is attracting enough capital that several heavily funded competitors can emerge around the same problem within months.
What we can say today is that Bessemer deserves a higher place in the cybersecurity conversation than a simple recent-deal-count ranking would suggest. Its latest activity is unusually concentrated around where the market is moving.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest cybersecurity market report.
This chart, included in our cybersecurity market deck, compares the main business model options for XDR and MDR cybersecurity vendors
Which cybersecurity investors actually make the top tier today?
Our top cybersecurity investors today are Cyberstarts, Insight Partners, Accel and Sequoia, followed closely by Ten Eleven, YL Ventures, Bessemer, SYN Ventures and Evolution Equity Partners.
Actual outcomes reinforce that ranking. Accel backed CrowdStrike years before its IPO and kept investing through every private round. YL Ventures backed Twistlock before Palo Alto Networks acquired it and Hexadite before Microsoft bought it. Team8 helped build or back Dig Security, Talon, Portshift and Sygnia before strategic exits. Forgepoint backed Attivo Networks before SentinelOne acquired it and BehavioSec before its sale to LexisNexis Risk Solutions.
Cyberstarts has one outcome on a completely different scale through the $32 billion Wiz transaction. More importantly, other companies from the same small portfolio have also become multibillion-dollar businesses, which makes the record harder to dismiss as one exceptional win.
Cyberstarts ranks first for us because company formation is the hardest part of the market to fake. The firm has made relatively few investments and still produced an exceptional concentration of valuable security companies.
Insight ranks second because nobody else combines the same breadth, amount of capital and current deal activity. If we weighted growth investing more heavily than seed investing, Insight would move to number one.
Accel ranks third because its cyber record has survived several technology cycles. CrowdStrike and Snyk came from different eras, and the firm continues to appear in important newer security companies.
Sequoia ranks fourth because it keeps entering earlier. Its recent behavior shows a global generalist competing directly for seed and pre-product cybersecurity positions rather than waiting for the specialists.
The next group is much tighter. Ten Eleven has the deepest broad specialist platform after the leaders. YL has one of the longest proven seed records. Bessemer combines decades of outcomes with a fresh burst of AI-security investing. SYN is building one of the most concentrated portfolios around agentic security. Evolution has become one of the strongest specialists for companies that are already scaling.
Forgepoint, Lightspeed and Team8 sit just behind that group, although Team8 can rank much higher for founders specifically looking for a venture-creation model.
| Rank | Investor | Where we think it is strongest |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cyberstarts | Day-one cybersecurity investing |
| 2 | Insight Partners | Overall scale and growth |
| 3 | Accel | Early entry plus long-term company building |
| 4 | Sequoia Capital | Pre-product and early generalist investing |
| 5 | Ten Eleven Ventures | Full-lifecycle cyber specialization |
| 6 | YL Ventures | Selective Israeli cybersecurity seed |
| 7 | Bessemer Venture Partners | Long track record plus current AI-security activity |
| 8 | SYN Ventures | AI-native and agentic security |
| 9 | Evolution Equity Partners | Cybersecurity growth investing |
| 10 | Forgepoint Capital | Enterprise security and CISO network |
| 11 | Lightspeed Venture Partners | Large early and growth financings |
| 12 | Team8 | Cybersecurity company creation |
Which cybersecurity investor is best at each startup stage?
Cyberstarts would be our first choice at company formation, while Insight Partners becomes much harder to beat once a cybersecurity company is already scaling.
Before there is much revenue, founders need investors that can judge technical teams, validate a problem with security buyers and help the company avoid building something impressive that CISOs will never buy. Cyberstarts, YL Ventures, SYN and Team8 are particularly strong there. Sequoia is the generalist we would most readily add to that group.
Around Series A and B, Accel becomes especially attractive because its record shows that it can enter early without forcing the company to change investors once the business gets bigger. Bessemer and Ten Eleven offer a similar combination of security knowledge and enough capital to keep participating.
At growth stage, the needs change. Recruiting senior executives, building enterprise sales, expanding internationally and funding acquisitions become more important. Insight and Evolution are better designed for that job.
A founder should therefore care less about finding the single most famous cyber VC and more about finding the investor whose best work happened at the stage the company is entering now.
| Startup stage | Investors we would look at first |
|---|---|
| Company formation / pre-product | Cyberstarts, Sequoia, YL Ventures, Team8 |
| Seed | Cyberstarts, YL Ventures, SYN Ventures, Ten Eleven |
| Series A-B | Accel, Sequoia, Bessemer, Ten Eleven |
| Growth | Insight Partners, Evolution Equity Partners, Lightspeed, Accel |
| AI-security formation | Cyberstarts, Bessemer, SYN Ventures, Sequoia |
| Israeli cybersecurity | Cyberstarts, YL Ventures, Sequoia, Accel, Team8 |
This chart, featured in our cybersecurity market deck, illustrates revenue distribution by customer segment in the cybersecurity market
So who are the top investors in cybersecurity?
Cyberstarts, Insight Partners, Accel and Sequoia are the four cybersecurity investors we would put clearly at the top today, with Cyberstarts taking first place if we care most about finding winners before everyone else does.
Cyberstarts has the most striking early-stage record. Its portfolio is small enough that the concentration of huge companies carries real weight, and its latest investments show that the firm is still finding new cybersecurity teams rather than living off the previous cycle.
Insight would be our number-one choice for overall firepower. It has the largest observed cyber deal count among the major firms we compared, billions of dollars already deployed in the sector and enough portfolio breadth to stay relevant when the hot category moves from cloud to data, identity, AI or something else.
Accel has probably the strongest multi-generation record among generalist VCs. It has proved that it can identify a company early, keep supporting it for years and repeat the process in a different part of cybersecurity.
Sequoia earns the fourth spot because it increasingly competes at the moment of company formation. That has become much more important now that the best cyber startups can raise enormous seed and Series A rounds before conventional traction metrics appear.
Just below those four, we would watch Ten Eleven, YL Ventures, Bessemer, SYN Ventures and Evolution especially closely. The differences between them have more to do with stage and strategy than quality.
If we had to choose one investor to find the next major cybersecurity company before it becomes obvious, we would choose Cyberstarts. If we had to choose one investor to fund that company all the way through global scale, we would choose Insight Partners. That distinction is the clearest answer to who actually leads cybersecurity venture investing right now.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest cybersecurity market report.
OUR METHODOLOGY
There is no single metric that tells us who the top cybersecurity investor is. We compare investors across early entry, meaningful outcomes, later-stage support, capital deployed, specialist depth and recent deal activity, then look for firms whose strength holds up across several of those dimensions.
We give more weight to decisions that reveal actual investment judgment. Backing a company before product-market fit, or before the winning category is obvious, counts more in this analysis than joining a very large financing after the company has already established itself.
We do not use one mechanical score. Recent financings help us judge who is winning competitive deals now, while older investments, exits and follow-on participation help show whether that activity is part of a repeatable record. Specialist and generalist funds are compared in the context of how they invest rather than by raw deal count alone.
For market context, we use Crunchbase’s 2026 cybersecurity funding data and Momentum Cyber’s first-quarter 2026 market review. For cross-firm historical comparisons, we rely on D.A. Davidson’s cybersecurity investor analysis using Capital IQ and PitchBook data through the first quarter of 2025.
For individual investors and portfolio outcomes, we prioritize company announcements, investor portfolio records and acquisition disclosures. That includes Insight Partners’ cybersecurity portfolio data, Cyberstarts’ portfolio and Wiz investment history, Google’s Wiz acquisition announcements, Accel’s CrowdStrike and Snyk investment histories, Sequoia’s account of its early Wiz investment, YL Ventures’ State of the Cyber Nation research and Fund V materials, Ten Eleven Ventures’ portfolio statistics, SYN Ventures’ portfolio, Bessemer’s cybersecurity track record, Summit Partners’ Keyfactor investment announcement and Team8’s portfolio records.
Key sources used for this analysis include: Crunchbase on first-half 2026 cybersecurity funding, Crunchbase on first-quarter 2026 cybersecurity funding, Momentum Cyber’s Q1 2026 Cybersecurity Market Review, D.A. Davidson’s Cyber Quarterly, Insight Partners’ cybersecurity portfolio overview, Cyberstarts’ portfolio, Cyberstarts on Wiz, Google’s $32 billion Wiz acquisition announcement, Accel on CrowdStrike, Accel on Snyk, Sequoia on its early Wiz investment, YL Ventures’ State of the Cyber Nation 2025, Ten Eleven Ventures’ firm and portfolio statistics, SYN Ventures’ portfolio, and Bessemer Venture Partners’ cybersecurity track record.
This chart, included in our cybersecurity market deck, shows how identity verification platform technology has evolved over time
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