Hack The Box, an online cybersecurity training startup, has raised $55 million in a Series B funding round led by Carlyle Group, one of the largest private equity firms in the world.
Other investors such as Paladin Capital Group, Osage University Partners, Marathon Venture Capital, Brighteye Ventures, and Endeavor Catalyst Fund also participated in the round.
The company said it plans to utilize the capital in research and development and expand the number of its employees. It also plans to expand into the US market.
Founded in 2017 by Haris Pylarinos, Aris Zikopoulos, and James Hooker, Hack The Box offers individuals, universities, companies, and all kinds of organizations around the world to level up their hacking skills by giving them access to virtual experiential hacking labs where they learn by doing and rewarding them with points and badges for advancing in their training. The platform also offers advanced analytics, solutions for talent acquisition and evaluation, and community engagement.
Hack The Box believes cybersecurity skills should be developed through hands-on practice rather than by reading books and obtaining certifications. From easy to the most difficult, its virtual hacking labs cover all skill levels. It adds new content every week, covering the latest exploits and vulnerabilities.
The cybersecurity training startup has over 450 hacking labs and a community of over 1.7 million platform members. It claimed to have trained over 1.5k corporations, academic institutions, government agencies, and organizations, including Toyota, Siemens, EA Sports, The New York University, and UCL.
Hack The Box, which emerged originally from Greece, has its headquarters in Kent, England, with its main Research and Development center in Athens. With a team of over 180 employees dispersed across the globe, the company is on a mission to become the world’s largest and most inclusive hacking community, with a parallel aim to make hacking the new gaming by introducing more meaningful gamification in the field and providing curated, and sophisticated hacking content.
With the latest $55M investment, Washington D.C.-headquartered Carlyle Group has acquired a high minority stake in Hack The Box, whose value is estimated to exceed $100 million. The Series funding takes Hack The Box’s total amount of capital raised to date to $70 million.
