British email security startup Tessian raises $42 million from Sequoia

The US-based VC firm Sequoia Capital has led a $42 million funding round in Tessian, a cybersecurity startup headquartered in London; Latitude, Balderton Capital, and Accel also participated in the round. The deal was first reported by TechCrunch in January and confirmed by the company today.

Founded in 2013 and formerly known as CheckRecipient, Tessian applies machine learning to enterprise email security in order to eliminate threats like spear phishing and misdirected emails. Simply speaking, Tessian analyses the historical email data and then looks for anomalies in further communications in real time.

“We’ve entered the third era of enterprise cybersecurity,” said Tim Sadler, CEO and co-founder of Tessian. “In the early days, network security sufficed. Then cloud apps and mobile devices proliferated, and we adopted endpoint protection. But in spite of these protections, data breaches are at an all-time high. The reason is humans. People are the most important decision makers in the enterprise and process extremely sensitive information on a daily basis, yet they’re more vulnerable than ever before. Tessian’s mission is to help organisations protect people processing data using technology that empowers, rather than restricts the way they work.”

The company plans to use the fresh capital to grow its team and expand its product line later in 2019.