Darktrace Names New Finance Chief Ahead of Potential Listing

(Bloomberg) -- Darktrace Ltd. named a chief financial officer as the U.K. cybersecurity company weighs going public.

Catherine Graham, previously CFO of online education company 2U Inc., will join Darktrace on Feb. 10, the company said in a statement. Graham has led four initial public offerings, including 2U’s in 2014, and raised more than $200 million in private equity funding, according to Darktrace.

Darktrace is setting itself up to be run like a public company, though Co-Chief Executive Officer Poppy Gustafsson said in an interview in November that the firm hadn’t made a final decision about a listing. It raised $50 million for investments in 2018 in a round that valued the company at $1.65 billion, and Darktrace doesn’t need any more funding to keep expanding, Gustafsson said at the time.

Founded in 2013 by veterans of U.S. and British intelligence agencies and mathematicians from the University of Cambridge, Darktrace’s technology learns how an organization’s systems and employees usually work to detect irregularities and prevent cyberattacks from spreading. It has headquarters in San Francisco and Cambridge, England, with CEOs in each location -- Gustafsson in the U.K. and Nicole Eagan in the U.S.

Darktrace is backed by Invoke Capital, founded by former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch. A number of Darktrace’s executives are Autonomy veterans, including Gustafsson and Eagan. The company’s investors also include KKR & Co., Vitruvian Partners and Summit Partners.

To contact the reporter on this story: Amy Thomson in London at athomson6@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Giles Turner at gturner35@bloomberg.net, Tony Czuczka

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