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Estonia-founded cybersecurity company Blackwall has raised $100 mn in Series C funding at a $2.2 bn valuation, as demand increases for technology that protects websites and manages automated internet traffic.
The investment round was led by AVP, with existing investors Dawn Capital, MMC Ventures and Tera Ventures participating.
- Blackwall secured $100 mn in Series C funding at a $2.2 bn valuation, led by AVP with participation from Dawn Capital, MMC Ventures and Tera Ventures.
- The company’s platform protects millions of websites and processes billions of requests daily, providing bot mitigation, DDoS protection and AI agent traffic management.
- Blackwall plans to expand into 12 regions across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East as automated traffic accounts for 53% of internet activity, according to Imperva.
Blackwall claims the valuation makes it Europe’s most valuable cybersecurity scaleup. The designation is disputed, with cybersecurity company Exein previously making a similar claim following a funding round that valued it at $1.7 bn.
The latest financing follows Blackwall’s €45 mn funding round in March 2025, representing another substantial capital raise in less than two years.
The company will use the proceeds to expand internationally and develop additional traffic security products for hosting providers, cloud infrastructure operators and managed service providers.
Blackwall expands AI bot protection and web security
Blackwall was founded by Nikita Rozenberg and Denis Prochko under the original name BotGuard.
The company originated from a problem encountered by Prochko, whose recipe website experienced excessive automated traffic that interfered with access for legitimate visitors.
Blackwall subsequently developed a security platform designed for hosting, cloud and managed service providers, which integrate its technology into services delivered to their own customers.
The platform combines bot mitigation, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection, web application firewalls, load balancing, server-side encryption and tools for managing traffic generated by autonomous AI agents.
According to the company, its infrastructure processes billions of requests daily and protects millions of websites.
Blackwall’s technology allows infrastructure providers to identify and filter automated requests before they reach customer websites and applications.
Blocking unwanted traffic upstream can reduce server workloads and infrastructure expenses. Hosting providers can also incorporate security services into their existing products, creating an additional source of revenue.
Unlike cybersecurity vendors that primarily sell directly to website owners, Blackwall distributes its technology through hosting and infrastructure providers that already maintain customer relationships.
$100 mn investment to support expansion across 12 regions
Blackwall plans to expand into 12 strategic regions across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. The funding will also support additional traffic management and cybersecurity products for hosting and cloud providers.
Our ambition is to build the traffic management ecosystem that brings those worlds together. This funding allows us to expand globally, deepen our platform and give hosting and infrastructure providers the technology they need to participate in the next generation of the web.
Nikita Rozenberg, co-founder and CEO of Blackwall
The company’s expansion plans come as automated systems account for a growing share of internet traffic.
Imperva research estimates that bots generate approximately 53% of web traffic, exceeding the share attributed to human users.
That category includes both legitimate automated activity and potentially harmful traffic. The expansion of AI agents adds complexity for security providers attempting to distinguish authorized automated requests from malicious activity.
AVP and existing investors back Blackwall’s growth
AVP general partner Warda Shaheen said Blackwall’s position within hosting infrastructure was central to the investment decision.
Blackwall has built something rare: a security company that grows with the internet itself. It is already the layer in front of millions of websites, and as more of the web’s traffic comes from agents, the company in that position becomes indispensable. That’s why we’re leading this round.
Warda Shaheen, AVP general partner
Norman Fiore, general partner at Dawn Capital, identified the growing volume of AI-generated traffic as a challenge for infrastructure designed primarily around human users.
“A tsunami of agents will overwhelm infrastructure optimised for human traffic. Nik and Denis are already delivering to their millions of customers the infrastructure optimised for the coming agentic web, and commercial success will flow to those businesses that are retooling today,” Fiore said.
MMC Ventures, another existing investor, also participated in the financing.
We’ve backed Blackwall from its early days and have seen the business scale into critical infrastructure for the web. As AI changes how traffic moves across the internet, Blackwall’s position at the front door of millions of websites has never been more important.
Mina Samaan, general partner at MMC Ventures
Tera Ventures, which invested in Blackwall during its earliest development, maintained its backing through the Series C round.
“Nik and Denis combine real grit, deep technical knowledge and a rare grasp of where the opportunity lies and how to capture it. Blackwall, now protecting millions of websites, is exactly the kind of born-global company Tera exists to back. We were their first believers, backing them from day one through the early years of building the product and winning its first partners and customers,” said Stanislav Ivanov, founding partner at Tera Ventures.
Blackwall competes with Cloudflare and specialist bot security firms
Blackwall operates in a market where established cybersecurity companies and specialist providers are developing tools to manage automated web traffic.
Cloudflare has introduced paid controls for AI crawlers, while dedicated bot protection providers have continued attracting venture capital.
DataDome raised $42 mn in 2023 to develop technology targeting automated cyberattacks and online fraud. Manchester-based Netacea secured $12 mn in 2022 for its bot detection and mitigation platform.
Blackwall’s principal commercial distinction is its distribution model, which allows hosting companies to deploy security capabilities across their existing customer bases. Its technology is integrated into infrastructure services rather than requiring each website operator to purchase and implement a separate security product.
Maintaining accurate traffic classification remains a technical challenge.
As AI agents become more common, Blackwall must distinguish legitimate automated activity from harmful requests without blocking authorized users or degrading website performance.
Expanding into 12 regions will also require the company to extend its infrastructure and maintain relationships with hosting and cloud partners across different markets.
