UK-based Immersive Labs raises $40 million to expand on-demand cybersecurity training platform across the pond

Immersive Labs, the UK provider of a cyber skills training platform, has raised $40 million from Summit Partners and existing investor Goldman Sachs to accelerate expansion in North America. Immersive Labs has built a fully interactive, on-demand cyber skills platform that allows professionals to develop new skills at their own pace and on their own schedules. The program features story-driven and gamified simulations, designed to enable both security specialists and business users to step into real-world cybersecurity situations based on real-world attack techniques. Through these exercises, users learn how to guard against security threats, from identifying phishing attacks to reverse-engineering malware. The platform also maps users’ skills throughout an organisation, providing internal data analysis that identifies specific skill shortages and vulnerabilities that a company should address.

Immersive Labs CEO James Hadley is actually a former UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) cybersecurity instructor. He explained the need for a new medium and method of education: “Gaps in cybersecurity knowledge meaningfully increase risk to an organization, creating vulnerability and presenting opportunity for attackers. The rapid, constantly evolving threat landscape has made traditional classroom training for cyber skills obsolete. At a time when cyber skills are stretched across the board, the Immersive Labs platform enables companies to identify these weak points and rapidly skill people to address them.”

The Bristol-based company has grown rapidly since its launch in 2017, with 750 percent year-over-year increase in annual recurring revenues and a team headcount over 100. Its new North American headquarters in Boston will lead further expansion in that continent, where the company finds demand is high. Commenting on the investment, Antony Clavel of Summit Partners said, “We recognize in Immersive Labs many of the same qualities that we’ve seen in other cybersecurity leaders: a technically strong and strategically thoughtful management team; a differentiated product addressing a large and urgent market need; and a rapidly growing base of blue-chip customers. We believe Immersive Labs is well-positioned to become a global category leader in cyber skills development.”