Tenacy, a SaaS platform for cybersecurity and compliance management, announces that it has raised €6 million in funding to accelerate its development in France and conquer the European market, starting with Benelux and Spain.
The Lyon-based start-up, with 50 employees, completed an initial €2.5 million funding round in March 2022 and rebranded (formerly AugmentedCISO) in October of the same year. This strategy has paid off, as the company quadrupled its revenue in 2022 and tripled its turnover in 2023. Its solutions are already used by nearly 150 customers (including bioMérieux, Vinci Autoroutes, Soluss, ANTS, and the PACA region) in 30 countries.
"We are proud of the trust our investors have placed in us. This fundraising reaffirms the relevance of our ' All your cyber in one place " and our business model. It will enable us to carry out our mission, which is to ensure the long-term viability of organizations through more efficient use of cybersecurity resources. We will consolidate our presence in France and expand into Europe. Our ambition is to achieve annual recurring revenue of €10-15 million within three years. We are betting on rapid, but steady and sustainable growth," said Cyril Guillet, CEO and co-founder of Tenacy.
Renewed confidence from long-standing investors and new entrants
While fundraising for European start-ups became scarce in 2023 ($45 billion compared to $82 billion in 2022, according to the annual report by venture capital fund Atomico), Tenacy managed to stand out.
The start-up completed its €6 million fundraising round last December. Existing investorsAuriga Cyber Ventures, Teamwork, Kreaxi, and Crédit Agricole Création renewed their confidence by doubling their investment, and the company is supported by its banks: Crédit Agricole Centre Est, Bpifrance, BNP Paribas, and Banque Populaire Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The company also welcomed a new ally, Axeleo Capital, an investment fund specializing in the cybersecurity sector.
- An investment in international development
"Our fund, dedicated to cyber startups, is supported by entrepreneurs in the sector and draws on a network of specialists. As investors in Tenacy for the past two years, we have developed a relationship of trust with a management team whose human and technical qualities have always effectively served the company's growth. We are confident in their ability to meet the challenges ahead, including that of expanding internationally. That is why we seized the opportunity of this Series A to strengthen our capital," explains William Lecat, Investment Director at Auriga Cyber Ventures.
"Today, CISOs want to benefit from expert products to help them manage their regulatory frameworks. Tenacy has successfully positioned a simple and robust tool in the French market while recording exponential growth in recent months. We are proud to support them in accelerating their development strategy in Europe," comments Mathieu Viallard, Managing Director of Axeleo Capital.
- Confidence in a unique and innovative tool
"A business-oriented approach with a reliable and effective tool and an experienced team have enabled Tenacy to become a benchmark on the French market, with the ambition of becoming a future European leader. Crédit Agricole Création, a shareholder since the seed stage, is delighted to participate in this new round of financing and to support Tenacy in this new phase of growth," said Jordan Rivieri, Investment Manager at Crédit Agricole Création.
"We invested in Tenacy in early 2022, convinced that the management team had identified a real, unmet need. Despite numerous cyber risk detection and protection solutions, there was still a lack of a tool for managing information system security strategies. Two years later, we have seen that this promise has been more than fulfilled, with excellent commercial growth, product improvements, and the creation of a high-quality team. We are therefore very pleased to participate in this new round of financing, which will enable the company to continue its development," adds Pierre-Antoine Cognard, Account Manager at Kreaxi.
- Trust-based relationships built on shared goals
"We have known the founders of Tenacy since 2016 because they helped us implement our information management system. We saw the product come to life before our eyes and, like all mid-sized companies and SMEs, experienced the challenges associated with the workload of our CISO. We first tested Tenacy in our environment. The rest is simply a matter of sharing common ambitions! We believed in the product's potential and in Cyril Guillet and Julien Coulet's ability to develop Tenacy. We wanted to be part of this adventure by investing!" said Julien Moretti, Partner and Technology Director at Teamwork France.
A resilient business model, in tune with the needs of businesses
- Cyber challenges facing organizations in 2024
In 2023, 53%[1] of organizations report that it is difficult to meet cyber requirements, and 88% of them have problems related to the shortage of cybersecurity talent. Recruitment difficulties and the resurgence of cyberattacks are causing burnout and significant distress among employees. Last year, 63%[2] of security decision-makers and practitioners experiencedburnout, and more than 80% felt their workload had increased over the course of the year.
On the other hand, many sectors are subject to increasing regulatory pressure: banking (DORA), industry (Military Programming Law and European NIS 2 Directive), and healthcare (HDS certification – healthcare data hosting). Organizations are also facing increasingly stringent requirements from their ecosystem (customers, partners, insurers, etc.), which requires greater visibility of their security level and multi-reference management.
- A solution designed for CISOs, by CISOs
In this highly tense environment, Tenacy's mission is to ensure the long-term viability of organizations through more efficient use of cybersecurity resources. The platform provides CISOs with a structure for modeling their cyber organization and security objectives by drawing on a database of 500 elements, including 40 security policies and more than 200 indicators. It also aggregates data from various technical solutions with more than 30 connectors. This enables cybersecurity teams to collaborate effectively using a single tool for their action plans, compliance management, and reporting.
In 2023, this solution was integrated into Attack Path Monitoring (APM), a project led by Tenacy, Sanofi, and Hackuity, with Inria and Cap Gemini as partners. It was selected for phase 2 of France 2030's major challenge to automate cybersecurity. This project provides a strategy based on the attackers' point of view (rather than the defenders') and optimizes the management of the vulnerability detection-qualification-remediation process to reduce processing times and users' exposure to cyber threats.
Tenacy now has nearly 150 clients and 3,000 users. Based in Lyon, its team of 50 employees is set to double in size by 2024 to meet the company's growth needs in France and Europe.
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