At-Bay pulled in a whopping $185 million in new financing that the cyber insurance startup plans to use for new product development and expansion into new markets.

Continued hiring is also planned. At-Bay is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., with an R&D center in Tel Aviv and operations in New York City, Atlanta, Chicago and Los Angeles, according to its web site.

“I can’t overstate what this achievement means to us,” At-Bay Co-Founder and CEO Rotem Iram said in a blog posting on his company’s web site announcing the news. “It’s a validation of the ideas upon which At-Bay was founded. Furthermore it’s a way out of the spiraling market – a blueprint that enables broad cyber coverage at affordable pricing.”

Underscoring his comments, cyber pricing climbed 56 percent in the 2021 second quarter in the U.S. alone, including a 68 percent hike in June, according to a recent Marsh report, continuing a months-long trend.

Rotem, in prepared remarks with the venture capital announcement, claims that his company’s “modern approach to risk management” can help counter the trend of legacy insurers pulling back on coverage in the cyber space and raising rates.

At-Bay, a managing general underwriter founded in 2016, said it uses in-depth risk research blended with an ability to adjust to risk models in real time, based on future expectations (known as heuristics). The company said it monitors risk continuously and that its methodology helps give clients an updated and future-forward assessment of risks. Separately, the company has a digital platform it says is intuitive and combines its insurance product with risk insights, letting brokers have more insightful discussions with clients about issues such as security, case studies and benchmark data.

Munich Re’s Hartford Steam Boiler backs At-Bay’s policies, and participated in the company’s new, Series D financing as an existing investor. Icon Ventures led the round along with Lightspeed Venture Partners. In addition to HSB, participation from existing ventures included Khosla Ventures, M12, Acrew Capital, Qumra Capital, entrepreneur Shlomo Kramer and Glilot Capital.

Including the new round, At-Bay has raised $272 million, and the company claims to have a post-money valuation of $1.35 billion.

Source: At-Bay