Boston-based cybersecurity company Cybereason raised $100M from SoftBank and announces SoftBank EVP Eric Gan will be its new CEO, replacing co-founder Lior Div
Meir Orbach / CTech :
Context & Ripple Effects
SoftBank has been Cybereason's anchor backer through every round: a $50M bet in 2015, another $100M in 2017, then the $200M Series E at a $900M valuation in 2019. The arc since then has been downhill — a US IPO filing in 2022 followed by layoffs of roughly 300 staff across two cuts that year.
Today's move converts SoftBank from investor to operator: another $100M, plus co-founder Lior Div replaced in the CEO seat by SoftBank EVP Eric Gan. That makes Cybereason one of the clearest cases of a strategic backer taking direct control of a distressed portfolio company rather than letting it fail — a structure whose tensions surfaced later when [[a:882355|Gan himself sued investors Steven Mnuchin and SoftBank Vision Fund over blocked fundraising]], ahead of a further $120M raise in 2025.
First-order effects
- Lior Div is out and SoftBank EVP Eric Gan is in as CEO, giving SoftBank direct operational control of Cybereason alongside a fresh $100M injection that extends the runway after the 2022 layoffs and shelved IPO.
Second-order effects
- Concentrating funder and CEO in one party sets up the governance conflict that later materialized: Gan suing Mnuchin and the Vision Fund over fundraising decisions, followed by a $120M round led by SoftBank, Vision Fund 2, and Liberty to keep the company solvent.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, SoftBank's distressed security portfolio gets recapitalized through insider leadership and repeated internal rounds rather than public exits — founder-led Israeli cybersecurity startups trading independence for backer-controlled survival, with the IPO path effectively closed.
The trend: SoftBank is shifting from writing large passive checks into cybersecurity startups to installing its own executives atop struggling portfolio companies and funding them through repeated internal rounds.