Cybersecurity has had a tough go of it these days, with funding within the sector dropping a precipitous 40% in comparison with the 12 months prior. However there’s promising early — if preliminary — indicators of a restoration.

The overwhelming majority of chief data safety officers reported larger budgets for 2024, in response to the cybersecurity-focused VC agency NightDragon. And, regardless of decrease general funding within the cybersecurity trade in Q1 2024, the variety of offers elevated in comparison with Q1 2023, per recruitment outfit Pinpoint.

It’s towards this backdrop that Evolution Fairness Companions, a development capital funding agency primarily based in NYC, as we speak launched a $1.1 billion cybersecurity and AI fund, the third such fund in Evolution’s historical past.

The fund — Evolution Expertise Fund III — was oversubscribed, with participation from current and new endowments, sovereign buyers, insurance coverage corporations, foundations, fund of funds, household places of work and angels. It’ll pursue investments starting from $20 million to $150 million in cybersecurity corporations and startups leveraging machine studying and AI to construct “market-leading” platforms, Richard Seewald, managing associate at Evolution and one of many agency’s founders, instructed TechCrunch.

“The Evolution Expertise Fund III has already backed fifteen main cybersecurity corporations, initiating its funding interval over 12 months in the past,” Seewald mentioned. “We anticipate to spend money on a portfolio of as much as thirty corporations within the current fund. We’ll work with administration groups and founders, offering them with help and perception in areas together with gross sales and advertising, product know-how, human capital, M&A and enterprise growth, actually enabling them to excel.”

With Evolution Expertise Fund III, Evolution’s technique can be to order ~75% of the $1.1 billion whole for early-growth-stage corporations, ~15% for later-growth-stage startups and ~10% for earlier-stage VC tranches, with investments to be made not solely in North America however in Europe and Israel — a hotspot for safety tech.

“Our technique is to take a position that fund in a diversified portfolio throughout the totally different phases of maturity,” Seewald mentioned. “We consider that gives non-public markets buyers with diversified publicity to cybersecurity alternatives.”

ESG can be one other issue, in response to Seewald.

“Evolution is dedicated to integrating materials environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards in its funding processes and possession practices,” he mentioned. “We actively have interaction with our portfolio corporations creating numerous boards and management groups bringing diverse views to decision-making processes, decreasing the danger of groupthink and enhancing accountability.”

We’ll maintain them to it.

Evolution, which has places of work in Palo Alto, London and Zurich along with New York, was based in 2008 by Seewald and Dennis Smith, who met whereas working collectively on the cybersecurity big AVG (now owned by Avast). J.R. Smith and Karel Obluk — the previous CEO and chief scientist at AVG, respectively — joined Seewald and Smith to begin Evolution after AVG went public.

Evolution’s 30-person groups manages round $2 billion in property and has backed 60 corporations thus far; its earlier fund was $400 million. Amongst a few of the agency’s extra profitable bets are Arctic Wolf (which is planning for an IPO), Talon Cyber (which is reportedly in negotiations with Palo Alto Networks for an M&A deal), Snyk, Aqua Safety, SecurityScorecard and Carbon Black.