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Sqrrl announced a $12.3 million Series C financing on June 14, 2017. Spring Lake Equity Partners led the round, with existing investors Matrix Partners, Rally Ventures and Accomplice participating. Spring Lake partner Jeff Williams joined Sqrrl’s board, and the company said it would use the capital primarily to expand its global sales operation.
The round was a major funding milestone for a cybersecurity startup whose technology helped analysts investigate threats that conventional detection tools had missed. It was also one of Sqrrl’s last independent milestones: AWS acquired the company in 2018, and AWS later connected Sqrrl’s technology and team with Amazon Detective.
What Sqrrl’s Series C included
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Announcement | June 14, 2017 |
| Round | Series C |
| Amount | $12.3 million |
| Lead investor | Spring Lake Equity Partners |
| Other participating investors | Matrix Partners, Rally Ventures and Accomplice |
| Board change | Spring Lake partner Jeff Williams joined Sqrrl’s board |
| Stated primary use | Expansion of the global sales team |
Sqrrl’s announcement did not disclose how much each investor contributed, so the round should not be interpreted as an equal split among the backers.
Why threat hunting mattered in 2017
Security operations had traditionally emphasized blocking known malware, matching signatures and responding to alerts. Threat hunting added an analyst-led, investigative layer: teams searched historical and live telemetry for unusual relationships, behaviors and patterns that had bypassed existing controls.
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Sqrrl positioned its software for that job. Its platform was designed to connect entities and events, apply machine-learning analytics and process very large volumes of security data so investigators could examine suspicious activity rather than wait for a definitive alert.
The financing release cited a SANS survey in which Sqrrl said 84% of security operations centers were involved in threat hunting, 91% believed it improved incident-response speed and accuracy, and 88% said it reduced adversary dwell time. Those percentages were company-cited survey findings, not independently established benchmarks for every security organization.
What Sqrrl sold
By the Series C, Sqrrl was selling a threat-hunting platform rather than simply marketing a database. The company described capabilities including:
- Link analysis: connecting users, hosts, accounts, indicators and events to reveal relationships that isolated alerts can hide.
- Machine-learning analytics: helping analysts identify anomalous or suspicious activity across collected telemetry.
- Large-scale investigation: searching and analyzing data sets that Sqrrl said could scale to multiple petabytes.
- Security-operations workflows: supporting analysts in enterprise security operations centers and government environments.
CyberScoop reported that the enterprise offering was built on Apache Accumulo and targeted organizations with a SOC or SIEM, including government, financial, telecommunications and retail customers. Accumulo was important to Sqrrl’s origins, but the company’s 2017 positioning had moved toward an end-to-end investigation product for security teams.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsHow the Series C fit Sqrrl’s funding history
Sqrrl was founded in 2012 by people whose backgrounds were connected to U.S. government and National Security Agency technology projects. Its early pitch centered on secure, scalable big-data infrastructure and Apache Accumulo before the company focused more directly on cybersecurity and threat hunting.
| Period | Financing or milestone | Reported detail |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | Early financing and company launch | Atlas Venture and Matrix Partners backed Sqrrl to develop secure, scalable and adaptable big-data technology. PR Newswire reported the launch financing. |
| October 2013 | Series A | $5.2 million, according to Sqrrl’s Series A announcement. PRWeb carried the announcement. |
| February 2015 | Series B | $7 million, reported by SecurityWeek in its funding coverage. |
| June 2017 | Series C | $12.3 million led by Spring Lake Equity Partners. |
Sqrrl said the Series C brought its total funding to $28.5 million. That figure should be attributed to the company: some databases and later technology reports list lower totals, and the available reporting does not establish one universally accepted number.
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How Sqrrl planned to use the money
Global sales expansion
The clearest stated use was building out Sqrrl’s global sales team. The company was trying to convert interest in threat hunting into repeatable enterprise sales, a typical objective for a venture-backed cybersecurity company at the Series C stage.
Europe and channel partners
In comments reported by CyberScoop, CEO Mark Terenzoni also discussed expanding in Europe and creating a partner channel. Those plans came from the CEO’s comments rather than a separately itemized budget in the financing announcement.
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Product and systems engineering
Terenzoni also identified additions to product and systems engineering as part of the company’s planned growth. The available announcement does not say that all $12.3 million was dedicated to hiring or that any particular headcount target was guaranteed.
Who invested in Sqrrl
- Spring Lake Equity Partners: the new lead investor in the Series C. Jeff Williams joined Sqrrl’s board as part of the investment.
- Matrix Partners: an existing Sqrrl investor that participated again.
- Rally Ventures: an existing investor and Series C participant.
- Accomplice: an existing investor that also participated; the firm was formerly associated with Atlas Venture’s startup-investment activity.
The announcement identifies the investors and lead but provides no individual check sizes or ownership percentages.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What happened after the funding round
AWS acquired Sqrrl in 2018. AWS later profiled former Sqrrl leaders and described the company’s technology and team as contributing to Amazon Detective. Ely Kahn, a Sqrrl co-founder who later became an AWS security product leader, said Sqrrl became Amazon Detective in an AWS Security Blog profile. An AWS Open Source Blog profile of former Sqrrl CEO Mark Terenzoni also documents the integration of former Sqrrl leadership into AWS.
AWS’s later references establish a technology and personnel lineage, but they do not show that the original Sqrrl-branded product remained available as an independent offering. Sqrrl should therefore be understood as an acquired company, not as a current standalone vendor.
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What is known about the acquisition price
AWS did not officially disclose a purchase price in the sources documenting the acquisition. Axios reported an estimate of more than $40 million, but that was media reporting and not a confirmed transaction value. It should not be presented as the amount AWS paid.
Why the Series C remains significant
The financing captured two developments in cybersecurity. First, investors were backing threat hunting as security teams moved beyond purely reactive alert handling and sought tools for analyzing relationships across large data sets. Second, Sqrrl’s path shows how a specialist startup could provide technology and talent that later became part of a hyperscale cloud provider’s security portfolio.
For investors and technology analysts, the round was therefore both a growth financing and a late-stage marker in Sqrrl’s commercialization. The company raised capital to scale its independent business in 2017; within a year, its platform and people were being absorbed into AWS’s security strategy.
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