San Antonio—[Updated 1/10/17, 10:57 a.m. See below.] Infocyte, a San Antonio cybersecurity company that uses a so-called threat-hunting method to seek out hidden or dormant hackers before any malicious software can strike, has raised a $3.4 million Series A round of funding led by Austin, TX-based LiveOak Venture Partners.
Infocyte plans to use the funding to push its product, called Infocyte Hunt, to the broader enterprise business market. The company’s service automates the method of installing software on individual computers to check for malware, as well as of collecting troves data to assess it for security risks—a process that can be laborious, according to Infocyte CEO and co-founder Chris Gerritz. [Wording changed in first paragraph to clarify that LiveOak was not the only investor.]
“This funding enables Infocyte to accelerate adoption of the Infocyte Hunt platform and continue to stay ahead of an ever-changing threat landscape,” Gerritz wrote in an e-mail about how Infocyte would spend the funding.
Founded in 2014 and based on Gerritz’s experience in the Air Force’s cybersecurity divisions, the company had previously raised about $1.4 million in seed funding from LiveOak. Infocyte has case studies for industries ranging from banking and finance to public transportation.
“We’re designed proactively to find compromises that are in your network,” he said during an interview with Xconomy in June. “If you’re already breached, we can find those breaches you haven’t found yet.”
A syndicate of other investors also participated in the Series A round, including Feik Enterprises and Hollis Family Partnership. Nicolas Hollis, who is the CEO of another cybersecurity services company in San Antonio called Coherent Cyber, is joining the Infocyte board of directors as a part of the recent funding round, as is LiveOak general partner Venu Shamapant.
Like Infocyte, Coherent Cyber offers “hunting” services to root out cyber intruders, offering to remove “bad actors in networks with state of the art tools and analysis,” according to Hollis’ LinkedIn profile. Coherent is not an investor in Infocyte and Hollis is representing the Feiks family on the board, according to a spokeswoman. John Feik, a longtime San Antonio pharmaceuticals executive who sits on the board of multiple life sciences companies in town, is the CEO of Feik enterprises.
LiveOak contributed half of the Series A. Feik led the second half of the round, which included the Hollis Family Partnership. [Explanation of financing added.]
