Cybersecurity funding may be down from last year, but there are still big rounds out there to be had.

Santa Clara, California-based networking and cybersecurity firm Versa Networks closed what the company is calling a “pre-IPO round” of $120 million. The round was predominantly equity, with some debt. The equity portion was led by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock. Silicon Valley Bank also participated in the round.

Versa positions itself as an SASE (secure access service edge) platform. Those platforms help deliver networking and security from the cloud to a company’s network edge, avoiding potential bottlenecks in the datacenter.

SASE is commonly looked at as a growing subsector in cyber. As companies move more to the cloud and toward edge computing, such security is seen as more vital. Large companies like Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks offer such platforms. Late last year, Israel-based SASE startup Cato Networks closed a new $200 million round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners at a $2.5 billion valuation.

“As the leader in SASE, the fastest growing security and networking category, and executing on SASE services for years, Versa is the only solution proven to deliver the industry’s leading and differentiated architecture for high performance and security,” said Versa CEO Kelly Ahuja in a release. “This funding will allow us to expand our go-to-market and accelerate new innovations that will further expand the market opportunity for us as a company.”

Funding down

After investors poured more than $20 billion into cyber last year, this year has seen a slowdown.

The recently ended third quarter saw only $2.6 billion go to startups in cyber, the lowest total since the same quarter in 2020, which saw $1.6 billion invested, according to Crunchbase data.

Through three quarters of 2022, the sector has seen about $13 billion invested.

Founded in 2012, Versa has raised $316 million to date, according to Crunchbase data.

Illustration: Dom Guzman