Canada-born online security firm 1Password has closed a $620 million (USD) Series C round, with investment from a number of superstars from the music and entertainment industries.
The round, which raises the company’s valuation to $6.8 billion, included backing from Trevor Noah, Justin Timberlake and Pharrell Williams, plus Hollywood stars like Ryan Reynolds, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr., Matthew McConaughey and Chris Evans.
Pharrell Williams is also an investor in firms such as Mixhalo and Squire Technologies. Justin Timberlake has previously invested in the likes of entertainment brand Superplastic, fitness tech firm Hydrow and several others.
1Password says that the round is the largest raised by a Canadian company.
1Password’s Series C was led by ICONIQ Growth, with participation rom Tiger Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Backbone Angels, and Salesforce Ventures.
Accel, who led the company’s Series A and B, is also participating in the round alongside Slack Fund, another previous investor.
1Password says that it will use this additional capital “to develop and scale human-centric security solutions”.
Other notable investors from the business world include Jeff Weiner, Executive Chairman at LinkedIn; Robert Iger, Former CEO & Chairman at The Walt Disney Company; Mary Barra, CEO at General Motors; George Kurtz, Co-founder and CEO of CrowdStrike; Frank Slootman, CEO at Snowflake Computing; Lucy Suros, CEO at Articulate and Therese Tucker, Founder & Executive Chair at BlackLine
1Password ‘s password and sensitive data management tools are used by over 70,000 companies, including, what it says are, 25% of Fortune 100 companies such as IBM, as well as technology firms like Slack and Dropbox.
Information stored in 1Password is end-to-end encrypted using 256-bit AES encryption and the firm claims to be the only password manager to combine a Master Password with a unique, locally generated, 128-bit Secret Key to authenticate.
“Our mission has always been to ease the tension between security and convenience, and the opportunity to deliver on this has never been bigger for 1Password.”
Jeff Shiner, 1Password
Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password, said: “Our mission has always been to ease the tension between security and convenience, and the opportunity to deliver on this has never been bigger for 1Password.
“We create products and solutions that improve upon and easily layer into a company’s existing security infrastructure, nurturing better habits for employees while strengthening a company’s security posture from within.
“That way, we can tackle the biggest security threats facing the modern workforce and deliver on the promise of providing a safer life online for families and businesses around the world.”
Will Griffith, a founding partner at ICONIQ Growth, who will join 1Password’s board as part of this investment, said: “In conversations with more than one hundred CISOs, CIOs, CTOs, developers, and IT leaders, we were impressed by their overwhelmingly fierce passion for 1Password’s ability to balance strict security standards with a profound understanding of how humans behave.
“By making safe online behavior second nature, 1Password is not only protecting individuals but also the enterprises where they work.”
John Curtius, a partner at Tiger Global, added: “As a pioneering high-growth company that’s seizing a major market, 1Password is an ideal fit for Tiger Global.
“Blurred lines between work and home, the explosion of cloud apps and surging threats have made protecting our digital lives more important than ever.
“1Password stands out with its track record of scaling world-class solutions built around the biggest risk and opportunity: humans.”
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