Alphabet invests in Herndon cybersecurity startup

Google's parent company led Expel's $50M Series D Round funding round

Published May 13, 2020 by Sydney Lake

Herndon-based cybersecurity startup Expel announced Wednesday it received $50 million in Series D Round venture capital funding. CapitalG, the growth fund of Google LLC’s parent company Alphabet Inc., led the round. CapitalG General Partner Gene Frantz will also join Expel’s board of directors.

Battery Ventures, Greycroft, Index Ventures, Paladin Capital Group and Scale Venture Partners also invested during this round of funding. Since 2016, the company has raised a total of $117.5 million in venture funding. Expel will use the new funding to grow its sales and marketing operations and invest in new service offerings.

Expel offers security operations center as a service via 24/7 security monitoring and response for cloud, hybrid and on-premises environments.

“As we set out to create Expel, we wanted to build something that would let security teams everywhere stop playing a game of alert whack-a-mole and focus on managing the risks unique to their business,” Expel CEO Dave Merkel said in a statement. “Now more than ever, CISOs [chief information security officers] deserve a security partner that not only helps them reduce their organization’s risk, but gives them more space to focus on other things.”