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Israeli cybersecurity firm Guardio hits $1.1bn valuation
Consumer protection company reaches one million customers as UK payment fraud losses climb to almost £1.3bn
Israeli consumer cybersecurity company Guardio, whose technology is already used by consumers in the UK, has reached a valuation of $1.1 billion after raising $40 million in a funding round backed by Wiz co-founder and chief executive Assaf Rappaport.
The Tel Aviv-based company has also surpassed one million paying customers globally and reached $150 million in annual recurring revenue following four consecutive years of triple-digit growth.
Its expansion comes as artificial intelligence makes online fraud increasingly sophisticated and difficult to detect. According to Barclays research, 78 percent of UK adults believe AI is making scams harder to spot, while 84 percent want technology companies to do more to stop them at source.
UK Finance said criminals stole almost £1.3 billion through payment fraud in Britain during 2025, while confirmed cases of unauthorised fraud reached a record 4.06 million.
The latest investment brings Guardio’s total funding to $167 million. Alongside Rappaport, the round included existing investors ION Crossover Partners, Union Tech Ventures, Vintage Investment Partners, Cerca Partners and Emerge Ventures.
Founded in 2018 by Israeli cybersecurity entrepreneurs Amos Peled, Daniel Sirota and Michael Weinstein, Guardio focuses on protecting people rather than individual devices.
The company says AI has transformed the nature and scale of cybercrime, enabling fraudsters to produce personalised phishing messages, convincing brand impersonations and deepfake voice calls faster and more cheaply.
Its technology monitors messages, emails, calls and web activity, seeking to identify and shut down scams before a user clicks a malicious link or hands over sensitive information.
It can also detect attacks that move between different devices and communication channels, such as a fraudulent phone call that persuades someone to download malware onto a computer.
“Scammers stopped hacking computers years ago – they hack people, and with AI, it’s cheap and easy,” said Peled, Guardio’s co-founder and chief executive. “Cybercrime is essentially democratised.”
He added: “Nobody is losing their savings to a virus. People are losing savings to a scam that AI wrote, voiced and dialled – while their antivirus reports that their laptop is perfectly clean.”
Peled said consumer cybersecurity needed to be rebuilt around the individual rather than a particular piece of hardware.
“That’s what one million people are already paying us for, and this round is a stepping stone to bring it to the tens of millions who are still protected by software built for a decade ago.”
Guardio plans to use the latest funding to expand and strengthen its range of consumer protection products as it seeks to reach tens of millions more users.
Rappaport, whose cloud security company Wiz agreed a landmark $32 billion acquisition by Google, said: “Security wins when it deeply understands context. In the AI era, scams are more sophisticated and personal than ever and Guardio is bringing that depth of protection to the billions of people left to fend for themselves online.”
He added: “I’m thrilled to back this team as they make the world a bit safer.”
Gilad Shany, managing partner at ION Crossover Partners, said Guardio brought together three qualities rarely found in one company: deep cybersecurity expertise, a consumer-focused product and a strong distribution operation.
“The results speak for themselves: four consecutive years of triple-digit growth, and more than $150 million in ARR,” he said. “Very few businesses in security run this well at this speed, and we are proud to double down on our investment in Guardio.”
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