Hack The Box Series A Funding

London, April 12, 2021: Hack The Box is proud to announce today a Series A investment round of $10.6 million led by Paladin Capital Group and joined by Osage University Partners, Brighteye Ventures, and existing investors Marathon Venture Capital. The round will support HTB’s growth as it establishes its presence in the US and global market, while further expanding its product portfolio for both individuals and organizations. 

Hack The Box’s journey started in 2017 with the founding team’s aspiration to make cybersecurity training accessible to everyone. Today, Hack The Box is proud to have one of the world’s largest hacker communities with over 500,000 platform members with diverse IT backgrounds, from beginners to experts. The players are challenged to learn by doing by “attacking” virtual vulnerable labs and advance their adversarial security skills in a simulated, gamified, and safe test environment. 

Over 19 million hours of total "play" time and 2.4 million "flag submissions" since launch, one million Parrot Linux OS installs in just the last quarter, and over 1,000% ARR growth over the past two years while remaining profitable, are only some of the key indicators of our journey so far. “We are delighted with our growth and community support but we are most proud of having created a platform that turns hacking training into a true passion. Everything we do is geared around creating a safer Internet by empowering corporate teams and individuals to create resilient systems. Hack The Box is proud to train the world's best,” stated Haris Pylarinos, Hack The Box Co-Founder and CEO. 

Gibb Witham, Senior Vice President, Paladin Capital Group commented, “We’re excited to be backing Hack The Box at this inflection point in their growth as organizations recognize the increasing importance of an adversarial security practice to combat constantly evolving cyber attacks. Recent headlines show that attackers will go to any length to advance their capabilities. Hack The Box keeps enterprises and government customers up-to-date on the latest adversary methods and tradecraft so that attackers are the only ones caught unprepared.”

More than 800 organizations (including governments and Fortune 500 companies across every industry vertical) and 550 academic institutions from all around the world have joined the platform to level up their adversarial capabilities. Aris Zikopoulos, Hack The Box Co-Founder and CCO, stated, “We are helping the world’s largest organizations be secure by having a well-trained and attack-ready cyber force. From day one, our vision has been to build a platform that turns IT professionals into cyber superheroes that know how to react when in front of any attack or vulnerability. The true hacking mindset is built with persistence and continuous self-improvement, not overnight.” 

Hack The Box has a relentless focus on product quality and rapid innovation. “Innovation runs in the team’s DNA,” said James Hooker, Hack The Box Co-Founder and CTO. “With this investment, our R&D function will grow 4x in the next 18 months so we can continue to define the market by introducing groundbreaking features across every single product. Our engineering team is committed to delivering the industry’s most advanced and consolidated platform, uniting the entire product portfolio of Hack The Box.” 

Hack The Box’s 360° product suite offers exploratory and guided training, real-time adversarial gaming, a cloud-based security OS, advanced analytics, targeted talent acquisition and assessment, and astounding community engagement. The company continues to introduce new products, most recently releasing Hack The Box Academy, which surpassed 250,000 visitors in its first three months. The new learning platform is driven by a promising product roadmap that entails top-notch training content releases and groundbreaking features, aiming to place Academy as the new industry standard in cybersecurity training and certification.

About Hack The Box
Hack The Box is the most massively growing hacking playground and cybersecurity community in the world. Counting 500,000 members in less than four years, the platform allows individuals, businesses, and universities to level up their security skills in the most practical and gamified way possible. From hundreds of constantly updated virtual hacking labs to the plethora of interactive cybersecurity courses at HTB Academy, Hack The Box is on a mission to upscale the cybersecurity capabilities of every professional and organization in the world. Join here: hackthebox.eu! 

About Paladin Capital Group
Paladin Capital Group was founded in 2001 and has offices in Washington DC, New York, London, Luxembourg, and Silicon Valley. As a multi-stage investor, Paladin focuses on companies with technologies, products, and services that meet the challenging global cyber security and digital infrastructure resilience needs for commercial and government customers. Follow the firm on Twitter @Paladincap and visit www.paladincapgroup.com. 

About OUP
OUP (Osage University Partners) is a venture capital firm focused on investing in startups that are commercializing pioneering university technologies. OUP partners with top research universities to invest in their most innovative startups, and OUP shares its investment profit with its partner institutions. The firm invests in software, hardware, and life science companies at all stages of company development. OUP has partnered with universities, including 37 of the top 50 U.S. institutions by research expenditures, and has invested in over 100 of their spinouts. OUP is part of a family of investment funds within Osage Partners, which is based in Philadelphia, PA and manages in excess of $800 million. Follow @OUP_VC on Twitter and visit oup.vc.

About Brighteye Ventures
Brighteye Ventures is the leading EdTech venture capital fund in Europe, leveraging deep experience and relationships in tech, education, media, and VC. Looks for exciting startups at the intersection of learning, entertainment and creativity to empower and expand the frontiers of human potential. Investing at Seed and Series A stages, we help portfolio companies refine product, build partnerships and scale across geographies. Brighteye Ventures are looking for entrepreneurs that use technology and industry knowledge to build competitive businesses that can become global leaders. Follow on LinkedIn and Twitter @brighteyevc.

About Marathon Venture Capital
Marathon Venture Capital is a seed-stage venture capital fund, helping ambitious Greek founders build world-class technology companies. With about $100m under management, Marathon has provided the first check in category leading companies, such as Netdata, Lenses.io, Causaly, and Hack The Box.