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Cybereason considered the normal hubs: New York, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. But ultimately, as co-founder detailed to Crunchbase News, the startup chose Boston as its new hub.

I wondered what makes a company like Cybereason choose Boston. After all, ?1

“Looking at the talent, market, access to other companies and customers, makes Boston the best choice possible,” to relocate a company, Streim-Amit told me via in a phone interview.

As for that initial hope that a move across the world would lead to better access to investors? It worked. To date, the now Boston-based company has raised over $388.6 million in venture capital.

In fact, this past month, Cybereason raised a $200 million Series E led by SoftBank Group and its affiliates, the largest round for the company in its history, and the largest cybersecurity round landed in Greater Boston of all time, .

Plus, Cybereason’s round made up about 40 percent of venture capital dollars raised by Greater Boston companies2 in August ($487 million). More on the other 60 percent later, but first, this record-breaking round inspired me to dive a bit deeper into what cybersecurity looks like in Boston for this month’s column on the Greater Boston startup scene.

A Recap On Cybereason

, which is known for its rapid bets into other companies in the form of large (and often nine-figure) venture capital checks, led Cybereason’s big round.

“Luckily for us, we found a great investor and a great partner in SoftBank, who have the same desire to build something very substantial [and[ not just go for quick returns,” he said. As we discussed in a separate post, the new Series E will be used to further fuel the cybersecurity company’s international presence.

Below is a chart of Cybereason’s total funding over time.

The company mentioned how cybersecurity, in general, has grown tremendously in Massachusetts. Think , or . Or . Or .

Traditional cybersecurity companies fit “innovation within the boundaries” of separating good actors from bad actors, he said. But the next generation has realized that “hackers are more sophisticated.” This new wave has created an inflection point in the focuses that cybersecurity companies have.

Check out our��previous Boston columns

“You have to have a much higher sophistication and look at the activity and determine by behavior and not just by what something looks like,” he said. Older companies, he feels, tackle problems after they come up. As we’ll unpack below, Cybereason isn’t the only new company looking to anticipate and predict hacks before they even happen.

Beyond Just One

, another cybersecurity company, in Greater Boston, has raised $151 million in known venture capital funding to date, .

, a VP at the security ratings firm, said BitSight has a ton of friendships within the cybersecurity space. The company is jumping in with other Boston-based companies working on application security, endpoint protection, and vulnerability scanning for partnerships, marketing insight, and smart hires.

From the exit angle, Boston cybersecurity also felt some momentum in August. Palo Alto-based , a security company, for $2.1 billion this past month. works on endpoint security, and went public last year. So while it’s beyond our private company niche, this deal is notable and tells us that has eyes on Boston’s security scene.

But Boston’s startup activity this month went far beyond the cybersecurity sector, so let’s wrap up with a quick roundup.

Chickpeas And Notaries

Going back to August totals, 14 startups across Greater Boston raised $487 million in venture capital funding, up almost three times the dollar amount from last month. I looked deeper to see why the uptick occurred.

First up, food. , which we’ve written about before, added $27.5 million in additional funding to its Series A round. The company now has $117.5 million in known venture funding for its fermentation technology that develops proteins and nutrients for plant-based foods. Also in the food category, Boston-based raised a $8 million Series B to give all of us crunchy, tasty chickpeas on the go.

Beyond fermentation and chickpeas, startups looking to help renovate old processes also found venture interest in August. raised $37 million in an extension of its Series B. The company launched a competitor to DocuSign in early June as it works to help its users verify legal documents online.

Ending With An Eavesdrop

Finally, I chatted with this morning, a Boston-based VC and startup attorney from Morrison Foerster. He mentioned that in terms of small talk on the streets, Silicon Valley and Boston are an inverse of each other.

In San Francisco, a casual stroll can allow you to eavesdrop on tech folks talking about , , , or , he said. In Boston, you’re more likely to overhear conversations on something biotech related. And if not that, life sciences.

To me that says that we all need to do a better job of reading into zones outside of our everyday. Boston is no exception. Next month, I want to unpack university and VC startup collaborations rising just in time for back to school. Email or .

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Looking at the total venture capital scored by Greater Boston-based startups in July year over year, 2019 was the biggest dip in five years. Thanks to the likes of startups like , , , and more, previous Julys in Boston saw nine-figure rounds. This July, we saw none. See the chart below for more.

The Past Month For Greater Boston

Going back to this July, however, Greater Boston startups raised $183 million through venture capitalists last month, with the majority of that total going toward Seed stage rounds, and then Series A rounds.

That total is a dip from June’s totals, when the same region raised $247 million. The June spike was due to an outsized round from Commonwealth Fusion, a startup which works on complicated concepts like superconducting magnet technology and commercial fusion on energy.

The company raised a $115 million Series A.

As Alex and Mary Ann explained when covering Commonwealth’s round that the startup has some local love in its DNA. Founded in 2017 it was spun out of MIT and works with MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center.

Below is a chart of notable rounds raised by Greater Boston-based startups in the past month, .

A slew of companies scored eight-figure rounds. raised $20 million to help with car loans for international students (and raised $130 million in debt financing), Sense raised $10 million to help you better track devices and automate your home, and scored $11 million to aid those who want more flexible work. Although its a tiny round, . raised $1 million to help us all find local music that we love, played live.

On the biotech front, we saw raising $1.8 million to create a non-invasive white blood cell monitoring device. Also, raised a $22 million Series A to focus on immunology.

Excluding Cambridge, a home for biotech startups, Boston-based startups racked up just over $139 million in venture capital funding. That’s more than double the amount that Boston-based companies raised in June, which was $59 million.

Why the sudden uptick within Boston? , a biotech company that plans to develop immunotherapy treatments for cancer, raised $48 million in a Series B. This is almost quintuple the size of any round scored by a Boston-based company in July.

As you can see, there was a slew of large(ish) Series A rounds made by venture capitalists. , an on demand marketplace that connects businesses to people who want flexible work, raised $11 million. which uses diamond dust to help identify objects raised $10 million.

Yup, diamond dust. The company launched from stealth in 2018, and now works with tech and consumer electronic brands as well as government organizations. , the CEO said that “maintaining the integrity of the data is vital, but it is not enough. We need to extend the trust into the products.”

The list above features a healthy mix of industries, reminding us that Boston isn’t just a biotech town. In fact, as we reported last month, the city’s food tech industry is thriving too.

And as we’ll discuss in our next section on acquisitions, some Boston-based food startups are even hungry.

Toast & Weed

In July, I wrote about how restaurant management platform Toast bought StratEx, its first-ever acquisition. The buy will help Toast customers automate their payroll and HR services, like employee on-boarding and scheduling. The Boston-based company said it plans to invest over $1 billion in R&D over the next five years “to continue building software and hardware designed specifically for the restaurant industry.”

More in acquisition news, , a public cannabis company, acquired Chicago-based for $875 million. that the combined entities make Curaleaf the world’s largest cannabis company by revenue.

To Close

This is just a snapshot of what was up in Greater Boston in the past month. When I lived in the city, I noticed growing tech scene just by sifting through Eventbrite and .

I’m not going to compare Boston to San Francisco just yet because I don’t have the nuance under my belt yet. That said, as I’m starting to understand SF better I think Boston is doing what’s necessary to be taken seriously as a startup hub — it’s opening innovation labs, and then more innovation labs, helping immigrant founders, devoting Wednesdays to immigration talks, and setting up Friday nights where you can meet your

This column is meant to be a quick, digestible window into this growing enthusiasm. Talk next month, and in the meantime any Greater Boston news can be sent over to natasha@crunchbase.com.

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But let’s say we strip away the tech-focused neighbors of Boston, like Cambridge for example. You’ll see that Boston alone might be viewed as more than a healthcare-focused town.

Looking at the last 12 months within Boston, out of the 10 biggest funding rounds, only one went to a traditional biotech company: Karuna Therapeutics, a developer of drugs for the treatment of schizophrenia. It raised a in March, led by ARCH Venture Partners.

Extra Servings

, Boston-based startups that work with food—from catering to developing ingredients for plant-based protein—have raised significant funding.

For example, , the CEO and founder of catering service , started a food company in an area where food is not the primary industry has worked out well. The company, which uses software to connect caterers to companies, raised nine-figure rounds twice in the past year.

The city’s ability to change has been key in her success. When she graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977, for example, Boston was pivoting from the hardware capital of the world, to the software capital of the world.

“But then that disappeared too, and a lot of it went to the West Coast…but it never died,” she said. “It’s just been eclipsed by things like pharma and biotech.” She said a few high-tech companies beyond biotech have found a home in Boston as a result of previous software roots.

As Mary Ann Azevedo reported, the company has more than doubled in revenue and bookings every single year for the last seven years.

One of those companies includes , a restaurant management platform launched in 2013 that is now valued at around $2.7 billion. It raised the biggest round within Boston during the past 12 months. In March, Toast raised a $250 million Series E, at which time the company its revenue grew 148 percent in 2018.

The 1,500-person company told Crunchbase News that it plans to invest over $1 billion in research and development over the next five years. Touching on Mallett’s earlier comments, Toast says part of that money will go to building software and hardware to cater to the restaurant industry.

Jumping away from late-stage unicorns, but staying in the food realm, early-stage company also made the list with its $90 million Series A, for meatless protein. In a world seemingly-ruled by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, Motif similarly looks to use fermentation to develop proteins and nutrients. The company has bits of biotech embedded in its DNA, as Motif Ingredients spun out of Boston-based biotech unicorn .

In a statement, Motif said it will use biotechnology rather than animal agriculture to engineer dozens of proteins, derived from dairy, egg and meat.

As Boston pivots beyond biotech, Silicon Valley-based investors have taken notice, and a liking to its new offerings. In our list, a slew of Bay Area investors—, , , , and others—are found on the term sheets of Boston’s largest rounds.

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