The Israeli cyber company PerimeterX, which developed a system for identifying and blocking bots online, announced today (Wednesday) a merger with an American startup that also specializes in the worlds of bots called HUMAN Security. The two companies did not elaborate details of the deal beyond stating that it was a cash and stock transaction.
The Americans are in charge
The PerimeterX platform focuses on detecting threats and distinguishing between a threat that is human or a bot, and stopping either or before it is too late, all the while having no impact on the system. Its products are relevant for the protection of web and mobile applications and programming interfaces (API). Besides behavioral identification of bots, the system knows how to use the information stored in them to identify ahead of time whether requests sent to the system are legitimate or fraught with danger.
With the various features that help the company's system identify whether it is a bot or person, the more their systems recognize human behaviors on web pages, the more advanced models they can build to identify non-human behavior.
PerimeterX specializes more in the protection of large enterprises, while the American company HUMAN Security develops a product for identifying and blocking bots specifically for digital media platforms and content sites.
With the merger, the company will keep the name HUMAN Security, with HUMAN’s CEO Tamer Hassan heading the company, while the entrepreneurs behind the Perimeter X – Omri Iluz and Ido Safruti – will become the company's new president and CTO respectively. They, along with PerimeterX investors, will become members of its board of directors.
In a conversation with Geektime, PerimeterX said that they preferred a merger rather than an acquisition, because that to them would signify the end of the road, while the merger is simply a direct continuation of the company's activities just with different terms of its overall product. The research and development center in Israel will be part of HUMAN’s security division.
HUMAN is the larger company of the two, has higher revenues, and a more significant global spread. That is why they kept their name and CEO with the merger. The company denied to us that the decision to merge was related to the market's current situation, and the decision to merge was already made back in October 2021, when the market was still afloat.
The investment bank Goldman Sachs will be the largest shareholder in the merged company, since it is the largest shareholder in HUMAN, after it acquired control of HUMAN together with Cyber Clearsky and another entity two years ago. PerimeterX was founded in 2014 by Omri Iluz, Ido Safruti and Ofir Ashkenazi. The company's development center is located in Israel while the headquarters are in San Mateo. The company, which employs 210 employees, emphasizes that no employee will be fired because of the merger, and they even plan to expand its development center in Israel.
