Cowbell Cyber nailed down $20 million in new venture capital financing from multiple investors. The InsurTech and MGA provides multi-faceted cyber insurance and related services to small and medium-sized businesses using a digital platform that relies on artificial intelligence.

The new capital will be used to fund product development, expand risk engineering, sales, marketing, and increase Cowbell’s footprint nationwide. Jack Kudale, Cowbell Cyber’s founder and CEO, said that his company’s emergence is at a crucial time for cybersecurity awareness.

“Cybersecurity is now a risk management issue that is critical to the future of the insurance industry and is evolving at a pace that insurers have rarely seen,” Kudale said in prepared remarks. “Cowbell Cyber has capitalized on businesses’ accelerated digitization and an ever-changing threat landscape.”

With the new Series A financing, California-based Cowbell has an indirect connection to Lemonade, an early InsurTech startup digital insurer that became a public company in 2020 and has seen its stock price surge.

The connection is through Brewer Lane Ventures, which led the investment round, and Brewer Lane managing partner Martha Notaras, who will join the Cowbell board of directors. Notaras previously was a partner at XL Innovate, a P/C InsurTech VC fund that invested in Lemonade, as well as Cape Analytics and Slice, among other companies.

Pivot Investment Partners also participated in the financing, along with Avanta Ventures, Markel Corporation, and existing investors ManchesterStory, Tri-Valley Ventures, and Holmes Murphy. Akbar Poonawala, Co-Founder at Pivot Investment Partners, will join Cowbell Cyber as a board observer, the company said.

The investment follows Cowbell Cyber’s September 2020 launch of its Prime 250 program, which empowers insurance agents to issue personalized cyber policies – a program that has since expanded to 38 states. Cowbell Cyber will continue aggressively growing its risk pool of 10 million continuously monitored organizations and its network of more than 4,000 agents and brokers that now distribute all of Cowbell’s cyber insurance programs, the company SAID.

Cowbell uses AI as the basis for its standalone and tailored programs designed to protect businesses from crippling cyber threats. The company touts its “closed-loop” approach to cyber risk as being especially helpful, as it bundles cybersecurity awareness training, continuous risk assessment, and pre and post-breach risk improvement services. Its cyber policies help policyholders to be proactive about managing cyber risks.

Cowbell’s continuous risk assessment services, Cowbell Factors, are available free, on-demand to all businesses.

Source: Cowbell Cyber