Santa Barbara Cybersecurity Startups Are Having a Moment

Two cybersecurity startups that call Santa Barbara home have announced sizable Series B funding rounds.

Theta Lake, which makes security software for companies that use Zoom, Slack and similar tools to communicate, unveiled a $50 million Series B led by Boston-based Battery Ventures on Tuesday. Other noteworthy names—including Silicon Valley-based Lightspeed Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Zoom and Cisco Investments—also chipped in on the round, which takes Theta Lake’s total funding raised to $70 million.

In a statement, the company said the new funding is “validation that the workplace has become increasingly digital since the COVID-19 pandemic, and organizations need new tools to stay compliant and avoid damaging, outside cyber threats.”

Meanwhile, MixMode, which uses artificial intelligence to detect cyberattacks, announced its own $45 million Series B led by Boston-based private equity firm PSG on Wednesday. Santa Barbara-based early-stage VC firm Entrada Ventures also participated in the deal.

MixMode CEO John Keister turned to a baseball metaphor to describe his firm’s AI-driven role in an evolving cybersecurity environment. “We are in the first inning of a transformation from rules-based security programs to true self-learning security programs,” he said.

Both cybersecurity companies said they would use their respective funding rounds to expand the scope of their technology. The deals reflect how Series B rounds have ballooned in size recently, hitting an average of $45 million in the U.S. last year—up nearly 50% from 2020, according to Crunchbase.

Santa Barbara has established itself as a cybersecurity hotbed of sorts: Other online security firms to have sprouted in the city include Archore, Novacoast and Lastline, which was acquired by Palo Alto-based VMware in 2020.