---
title: "Guardio’s $40M at $1.1B: Consumer Cyber With $150M ARR"
description: "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."
date: 2026-09-04T00:00:00.000Z
tags: ["2026-vc-news", "startup-funding", "venture-capital", "cybersecurity", "consumer-tech"]
source: https://venturecapitaltracker.com/2026-guardio-40m-1-1b-consumer-cyber
---

# 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.

**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.

**Spine:** 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

| Field | Detail |
| --- | --- |
| Company | [Guardio](/startup/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.

**Likely founder 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.

We do **not** invent `/fund/` pages for ION/Union/Vintage.

| 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

1. PR Newswire: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/consumer-cybersecurity-pioneer-guardio-reaches-1-1-billion-valuation-302868923.html
2. CTech: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hy5rf0lofg

**By:** [Venture Capital Tracker](https://venturecapitaltracker.com/editorial-policy)

**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.