Spanish VC firm Adara Ventures announces the sale of Madrid-born cybersecurity company AlienVault to AT&T, and AlienVault’s CEO will lead AT&T’s cybersecurity solutions business division.
Born in Madrid in 2007 and now based in San Mateo, California, AlienVault’s sale to ATT&T is being described by El Referente as “one of the most significant venture capital operations anchored in the Spanish innovation ecosystem and with a large international footprint.”
Through AlienVault, AT&T acquires a portfolio of leading products and a team of experts focused on expanding its range of cybersecurity solutions to offer it to millions of small and medium-sized companies.
AlienVault President and CEO Barmak Meftah will become president of AT&T Cybersecurity Solutions and CEO of AlienVault.
Barmak Meftah
“Together we have the opportunity to simplify a complex problem and automate how customers tackle their cybersecurity needs,” Meftah said in a statement.
“We will combine our phenomenal threat detection, incident response, and compliance security platform with AT&T’s managed security capabilities, making near real-time threat information actionable and achievable,” he added.
AT&T’s new standalone cybersecurity solutions business division will focus on making AT&T’s extensive cybersecurity capabilities and technologies accessible to businesses of all sizes around the globe.
Under Meftah’s leadership, AT&T will continue to support and expand AlienVault’s investment in their multichannel sales ecosystem including value added resellers, distributors and managed security service providers while also building on AlienVault’s foundational technology and threat research.
Thaddeus Arroyo
“Whether big, small or somewhere in between, all organizations are now targets of the types of sophisticated cyberattacks that have bombarded large enterprises for years,” said Thaddeus Arroyo, CEO of AT&T Business.
“AlienVault’s cybersecurity talent and threat intelligence capabilities, combined with our ability to deliver innovative threat detection and response solutions at-scale, will help enable businesses of all sizes to better defend themselves,” he added.
Adara Ventures was the first company to invest in AlienVault in 2008. Since then, it has worked closely with the company’s management team in the following rounds of financing, in organizational development and in the strategy for going to market.
Alberto Gomez
Alberto Gómez, managing partner of Adara and until now a member of the Board of Directors of AlienVault, explained the meaning of this exit via El Referente, stating, “The case of AlienVault is a success case that includes the foundations of venture capital: investing in innovative startup projects, contributing to the organizational and business development and providing good rates of return for our investors, as well as for other interest groups.”
Nico Goulet, managing partner of Adara together with Gómez, commented, “The ultimate goal is to sell the investees once they reach critical mass and the magnitude needed in these international hubs, as has been the case with AlienVault, which completes the investment cycle of venture capital firms and allows the company to begin its next phase of development.”
Nico Goulet
AlienVault employs more than 350 people, has its headquarters in San Mateo (California) and offices in Madrid and Granada, Austin (Texas) and Cork (Ireland). More than 20% of employees are in Spain, dedicated mainly to assistance and product development. More than 7,000 customers in 40 countries use their unified security solutions.
CEO Meftah will now combine the strengths of AlienVault’s foundational Unified Security Management platform and Open Threat Exchange with AT&T’s suite of managed cybersecurity services, solutions and network visibility to better protect businesses.
