Cloaked, a consumer-focused privacy company founded by brothers Arjun and Abhijay Bhatnagar in 2020, has successfully raised $375 million in Series B funding and growth financing. This new investment will provide the company with the fuel to grow its product line and add enterprise solutions. Simultaneously, it will double down on improving its consumer-facing applications. The $25 million funding round was led by some pretty big-time investors including General Catalyst, Lux Capital and Human Capital.
Cloaked at first let users distinguish between a work identity, personal identity, etc. They might leverage any number of data points, like emails, phone numbers, and passwords. This functionality allowed users to authenticate to various services without revealing their true identity. Since then, Cloaked has not only grown the number of products it markets and sells. Now, it covers expansive services such as data removal, identity theft insurance, virtual private networks (VPN), and dark web monitoring.
Cloaked’s CEO and co-founder Arjun Bhatnagar, speaking during TBLI’s Seedstars pitch, argued that privacy has become a critical need in today’s digital environment. He stated, “We’ve seen AI get better than humans at compromising individuals. We look at this as a problem of personal safety, family safety, and financial fraud. We see AI proliferating around scam spam and phishing. It comes down to now in this age around surveillance, how do you find a solution that fits between these different aspects, and we’re winning in this category from the consumer side.”
Cloaked says it has successfully protected 10 million identities. Beyond that, they’ve empowered Privacy.com users to delete more than 1 billion records from data broker websites. It’s been a hectic time for the company, since launching its revolutionary call-screening feature last year. It has stopped more than 50 million scam and spam telephone calls.
This new funding will now enable Cloaked to double down on extending its AI-driven screening protection. It’s meant to improve security beyond the app, including for SMS, email communications, and web browsing. With the company planning an enterprise solutions launch in the immediate future, there is pervasive interest this time around. These solutions will protect employees with the same safeguards that it pioneered in its consumer products. These offerings come with identity and password management tools that are purpose-built to solve these issues and improve security postures.
Mark Crane, a partner at General Catalyst with deep experience in intelligence and security, was confident Cloaked could initially deliver. He remarked, “In terms of the product, they have built tons of surface area for the consumer and what they want to be able to use for privacy. Some people want to use everything out of the box, and some people want to use smaller pieces. The beauty of Cloaked is that any consumer, anything they care about, they can approach it, and they can get the solution that they want and need.”
Cloaked has more than doubled its staff to close to 70, year-round employees. The company expects to sustain this growth by ramping up hiring in product development, engineering, enterprise sales and international operations. This strategic hiring is focused on further strengthening Cloaked’s abilities as it looks to fully expand into the enterprise market.
At every step of the company’s growth trajectory, the company has been bolstered by massive outsized support from investors in each of the company’s funding round. For the first time ever, General Catalyst has led the latest funding round. Their history of investing in every prior round in the interim speaks to their strong and continued commitment.
Cloaked further establishes itself as the privacy solution leader with the addition of a complete suite of security services cloaked under privacy. The firm believes that in order to meet their changing needs. With the public increasingly concerned about privacy and data security, they are raising the bar.
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