Your old emails are a goldmine for hackers. Material Security protects the data sitting in email archives — not the emails coming in, but the ones already there. Every company's email archive contains passwords, financial data, contracts, and sensitive information that anyone with a compromised account can access. Material redacts and protects that data retroactively. It's like putting a lock on every filing cabinet in your office after realizing you left them all open for 10 years.
Founded
2017
HQ
San Francisco, USA
Total Raised
$155 million
Founder
Ryan Noon, Abhishek Agrawal
Status
Private
Website
material.securityTHE ORIGIN STORY
Ryan Noon was a security researcher who realized that email security focused entirely on the wrong problem. Everyone was building tools to catch phishing emails (incoming threats), but nobody was protecting the massive archive of sensitive data already sitting in everyone's inbox.
A single compromised account could expose years of contracts, passwords, financial data, and personal information. In 2017, Noon co-founded Material Security to protect email data at rest — redacting sensitive content in archived emails and requiring re-authentication to access it.
WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DO
SaaS subscriptions. Companies pay per-user annual fees for email data protection.
The product integrates with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Material scans email archives, identifies sensitive content (SSNs, credit cards, passwords, financial data), and either redacts it or requires step-up authentication to access.
Revenue scales with the number of email accounts protected.
THE PRODUCTS
Email Data Protection — scans and redacts sensitive content in email archives. Identity Verification — requires re-authentication to access sensitive emails.
Phishing Protection — blocks credential theft by making email data useless to attackers. Posture Management — visibility into email security risks across the organization.
HOW THEY GREW
Unique positioning. Material was the only company focused specifically on email data at rest.
Every other email security company focused on inbound threats (phishing, malware). This blue ocean positioning meant no direct competitors and easy differentiation in sales conversations with CISOs.
THE HARD PART
Market education. The concept of "email data protection" is new — CISOs need to be convinced that their email archives are a significant risk.
Many organizations have never thought about the data sitting in old emails. Competing for security budget against more established categories (endpoint, cloud, identity) is challenging.
MONEY TRAIL
Series A
2019 · Led by Andreessen Horowitz
$22M raised
Series B
2021 · Led by Andreessen Horowitz
$40M raised
Series C
2023 · Led by Andreessen Horowitz
$100M raised
$1.1B valuation
WHO BACKED THEM
Andreessen Horowitz led the Series C. Other investors include Founders Fund, Culture Ventures, and Costanoa Ventures.
The a16z investment brought significant credibility in the security market.
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