Québec City-based artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity startup Qohash has closed $17.4 million in Series B financing as it looks to scale its data-security platform.
The round was led by Fonds de solidarité FTQ, with participation from Export Development Canada and existing investor Desjardins Capital. It comes approximately three years after Qohash closed $8 million in Series A financing in 2021. To date, the startup has raised over $25 million.
Qohash offers a data-security platform aimed at helping businesses to proactively identify risks with their sensitive data. The startup says it uses AI to automate responses and provide actionable recommendations to discover, classify, track, and secure high-risk internal files.
Qohash started in 2018 by automating data discovery and risk management following several high-profile data breaches. It claims its platform, called Qostodian, can be implemented in as little as five minutes, and thanks to its automation capabilities, can save businesses hours of investigation time.
Qostodian platform automatically finds, inventories, and continuously monitors individual data elements across workstations, attached and shared drives, and Microsoft 365 cloud apps.
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In a statement announcing its Series B round, Qohash claims it has seen “significant traction” since securing its Series A financing, particularly within obtaining customers in financial services, the public sector, and tech.
According to its website, Qohash’s customers include financial-services firms and large enterprises such as Desjardins, the Canadian Automotive Association, the US National Parks Conservation Association, and Security Bank of Kansas City.
“Our clients value our targeted approach that yields tangible risk reduction, avoiding superficial coverage and vanity metrics,” Jean Le Bouthillier, co-founder and CEO of Qohash, said in a statement. “The latest funding accelerates our investment in targeted AI capabilities, enhancing our platform to provide more precise and actionable insights for our customers.”
With the additional capital from this funding round, Qohash plans to ramp up the development of its platform but also its growth in sectors, where it says “the protection of sensitive data is non-negotiable.”
