Singapore government joins ‘botwall’ startup Shape Security’s $40m series D round

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Just last week, Yahoo confirmed that data linked to at least 500 million of its user accounts has been stolen in what could be the largest cybersecurity attack ever. Shape Security, a startup that fights such breaches, today announced it raised US$40 million in series D funding.

Singapore’s EDBI, the corporate investment arm of the country’s Economic Development Board, participated in the round, along with Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Shape has developed a “botwall” that protects enterprises’ websites and mobile apps against automated malware and bots, which mimic human behavior.

The company claims to have prevented over US$1 billion in fraud losses for its clients, which include Fortune 500 companies and government agencies around the world.

“Shape is deployed as the primary line of application defense on all customer transactions for two of the top 10 airlines in the world, the world’s largest hotel company, the world’s largest bank, one of the top 10 retailers in the world, and one of the largest government agencies,” EDBI’s statement reads.

Unlike existing solutions, Shape says its product is designed to shift its ‘shape’ and constantly evolve to stay ahead of cyber breaches such as DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks and content scraping, among others.

Scaling

EDBI says the funding will help the company “accelerate its growth in the Asia-Pacific region.”

“Shape is leveraging Singapore to access Asian customers and partners in the region to advance their global growth strategy,” notes EDBI president and CEO Chu Swee Yeok.

“Over the past year, we’ve scaled the capabilities of our technology and now we’re looking forward to further scaling our business,” Shape CEO Derek Smith says.

The round brings Shape’s total funding to US$106 million since being founded in late 2011. Its existing investors include Baseline Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, NVP, Venrock, Google Ventures, Eric Schmidt, as well as Northern Light Ventures, which invests in tech companies in China.