· Investment Strategies · 2 sources
Guardio’s $40M at $1.1B: Consumer Cyber With $150M ARR
Guardio raised $40M at a $1.1B valuation — Wiz co-founder Assaf Rappaport joined returning Israeli growth investors — after hitting $150M ARR and 1M paying customers.
By Venture Capital Tracker Editorial
Guardio raised $40 million on September 3, 2026, at a $1.1 billion valuation, taking total funding to $167 million (PR Newswire). Assaf Rappaport (Wiz co-founder/CEO) joined returning investors ION Crossover Partners, Union Tech Ventures, Vintage Investment Partners, Cerca Partners, and Emerge Ventures.
For comparable companies and investment activity, see VCT's 2026 cybersecurity funding landscape.
consumer security finally has a SaaS-looking P&L — $150M ARR, 1M paying customers, four years of >100% growth — while AI made scams cheap enough that antivirus-on-the-laptop is the wrong product.
Key facts
- Company
- Guardio (Tel Aviv)
- Round
- $40M at $1.1B
- ARR
- $150M (company)
- Customers
- 1M+ paying
- Total raised
- $167M
- Founded
- 2018
- Founders
- Amos Peled (CEO), Michael Vainshtein (CTO), Daniel Sirota
Who uses the product — and for what job
Users: individuals (and households) paying for protection of digital accounts and daily online activity — email, messages, calls, browsing.
Job: stop AI-scaled social-engineering scams before the victim clicks, not detect malware after a laptop is “clean.” Guardio’s pitch is person-centric monitoring across channels, including multi-device attack paths (call → malware on PC).
CEO Amos Peled’s framing: scammers hack people, not computers — and AI collapsed the cost of personalized phishing and deepfake voice.
Why now
- FBI and industry crime stats (cited in company materials) show AI-related complaint and loss spikes — consumer budgets follow fear with a subscription.
- Enterprise cyber is crowded; consumer cyber with real ARR is rare enough to clear a unicorn mark on a modest primary check.
- Rappaport’s check is a category endorsement from the last generation’s cloud-security winner.
Why these investors — portfolio fit
ION and peers are doubling down on a crossover growth story with proven distribution. Rappaport adds operator signal without needing a traditional lead check size.
Strategic rationale: raise a clean growth extension at scale metrics rather than a mega-round that would reprice before distribution catches the next 10× of users.
ION/Union/Vintage are not in our fund directory.
| Dimension | Fit |
|---|---|
| Stage | Growth / late |
| Thesis | Person-centric consumer cyber in the AI scam era |
| Multiple | ~$7× ARR on $150M / $1.1B — disciplined vs. many AI apps |
| Risk | CAC durability, platform policy risk (browser/OS), brand trust |
Competitive map
| Player | Lane |
|---|---|
| Classic antivirus (Norton, McAfee) | Device-centric legacy |
| Big Tech account protection | Free, partial, platform-tied |
| Other consumer scam blockers | Feature overlap, less ARR proof |
Takeaway
Guardio’s story is the inverse of vaporware AI security: unit economics first. The unresolved question is whether person-centric protection can reach the “tens of millions” of users Peled targets without CAC exploding once the easy million is converted.
Sources
- PR Newswire: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/consumer-cybersecurity-pioneer-guardio-reaches-1-1-billion-valuation-302868923.html
- CTech: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hy5rf0lofg
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Editorial note: AI tools assisted with research, structure, or drafting. Venture Capital Tracker retains human editorial responsibility for factual accuracy, relevance, and source quality before publication.
