Huntress, which offers an endpoint security service to IT resellers, raises $40M Series B led by JMI, bringing its total raised to $60M
Join Transform 2021 this July 12-16. Register fo r the AI event of the year. — Cybersecurity startup Huntress today announced it has closed …
Context & Ripple Effects
This $40M round is the middle beat of a funding arc the corpus tracks end to end: Huntress raised an $18M Series A led by ForgePoint Capital in early 2020 as it pushed into new market segments and geographies, then followed with a $60M Series C led by Sapphire Ventures in 2023 that took total funding to ~$160M, and ultimately a $150M Series D led by Kleiner Perkins, Meritech, and Sapphire at a $1.5B+ valuation. The JMI-led B is where the company's channel strategy — endpoint security sold through IT resellers — got its growth capital.
The CEO stated the money would go toward new products aimed at small businesses, which is exactly the segment the later rounds double down on: by the Series C and D announcements, Huntress describes itself not as an endpoint tool but as an SMB-focused managed security platform.
First-order effects
- Huntress gets the capital to build out SMB-directed products on top of its reseller-distributed endpoint service, accelerating the shift from single tool to managed security platform that its later positioning confirms.
- JMI joins ForgePoint Capital as an investor in the company, adding a second institutional backer behind the reseller channel thesis.
Second-order effects
- Competing detection startups face the same fundraising treadmill — weeks after this round, Hunters raised a $30M Series B led by Bessemer Venture Partners for extended threat detection and response, showing capital flowing to whoever can claim broader coverage than endpoint-only tools.
- IT resellers and managed service providers gain a better-funded vendor competing for their security stack, raising the stakes on which platform they standardize their small-business clients on.
Third-order effects
- If the trajectory holds — $18M to $40M to $60M to $150M rounds culminating in a unicorn valuation — SMB security consolidates around managed platforms distributed through the reseller channel rather than point products sold directly to small businesses themselves.
- Sustained multi-stage VC investment in this category pressures enterprise-focused vendors to build down-market offerings, since the SMB layer is being claimed by specialists with dedicated channels.
The trend: Security vendors serving small businesses are scaling from niche endpoint tools into venture-backed managed platforms sold through the IT reseller channel, with successive mega-rounds marking each step.