Southeast Michigan cybersecurity businesses AaDya, Censys bring in millions in venture investment

Southeast Michigan cybersecurity companies continue to be the object of investor affection, to the tune of nearly $40 million in just the last few days.

Two companies — the Ann Arbor-founded Censys Inc. and AaDya Security Inc. in Detroit — have connections to one of the original cybersecurity businesses in the region, and both announced substantial rounds of growth capital this week.

Censys, a University of Michigan spinout focused on monitoring clients’ various internet-connected devices for potential vulnerabilities, on Thursday morning announced a $35 million Series B fundraising round led by the venture capital round of Intel Corp., as well as other investors.

Meanwhile, AaDya, which is focused on catering its software to small-and-medium-size businesses as opposed to larger enterprise organizations, has closed on $3.1 million seed round.

Neither company disclosed a valuation at which their rounds were raised.

The investment in the two companies comes less than six months after another Ann Arbor cybersecurity businesses, Blumira, closed on a $10.3 million investment round.

Adrian Fortino, an Ann Arbor-based managing partner at venture capital firm Mercury Fund — which led the Blumira raise — said the trio of investments point to signs of success in ongoing efforts to help shift the state of Michigan away from its long-time dependence on the automotive sector.

“This how we diversify the state,” Fortino told Crain’s. “There’s been diversification conversations forever. (Now), we’ve really built out the institutional support — from a talent perspective, from a funding perspective — to allow these companies to really meaningfully grow.”

Venture investment into cybersecurity companies globally hit an “unprecedented” figure last year: $21.8 billion. That’s according to a report in industry publication Crunchbase, which noted that in all of 2020 there was just $8.9 billion invested in the sector.

“That means the last three months of 2021 saw just about $1 billion less invested than all of the entire previous year, which was a record year before 2021,” according to the Crunchbase report. “That is despite 568 fewer funding deals in those three months when compared to all of 2020.”