Darktrace shares surge after snapping up Dutch rival Cybersprint for $54m

Shares in British cybersecurity group Darktrace (DARK.L) surged on Wednesday after the company completed its first acquisition.

The tech firm bought Dutch rival Cybersprint for €47.5m ($53.9m, £39.6m).

Cybersprint is an attack surface management firm that provides real-time insights to eliminate blind spots and detect risks.

The FTSE 250 (^FTMC) company's acquisition aligns with its vision of delivering a "continuous cyber artificial intelligence (AI) loop" and complements its self-learning technology and inside-out view.

The deal, to be completed around 1 March, will see Darktrace gain an additional European research and development (R&D) centre in The Hague, Netherlands.

It will be settled via 75% in cash and 25% equity. This values the purchase at around 12.5 times Cybersprint’s annual recurring revenue.

The Dutch company's data will also expand existing Darktrace Detect and Respond products with external vulnerability data and accelerate the firm’s market entry into new areas like proactive AI cyber security.

Darktrace CEO Poppy Gustafsson said: "Bringing inside-out and outside-in visibility together is critical and having access to the robust, rich, real-time external dataset combined with Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI means that customers get a holistic view of prioritised cyber risks to ... their organisation.

"With this acquisition, we are able to leverage Cybersprint’s seven years of R&D to accelerate our Prevent product family, ultimately making it much harder for cyber-attackers to carry out successful missions."

Darktrace shares rose 4% on the news and were up 2.9% at the time of writing.

Cybersprint's chief executive Pieter Jansen said the company was "looking forward to joining Darktrace and working together to accelerate state-of-the-art innovations to make organisations more cyber secure."

Darktrace also clinched a multi-million-dollar contract with one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies, which has been using its self-learning AI to protect from cyber-attacks.

Self-learning AI does not rely on historical data, it instead constantly builds on new information and is equipped to spot and stop new attacks, whether they are insider threats or advanced, nation-state-led attempts to compromise data.

"Defending the semiconductor industry is critical for our national security, especially at a time when the sector is facing supply shortages," Gustafsson added. "We are proud to be playing a role in the defence of this space with self-learning AI, which intelligently detects and interrupts threats while business operations continue as normal."

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Darktrace made its London debut in May last year. The company’s initial public offering valued it at £1.7bn, which equated to 250p a share. Shares have since jumped to 353.80p, a rise of 41.5%.

The company was founded in Cambridge in 2013. It uses its AI to build what it calls an "enterprise immune system" that monitors a company's computer networks to detect unusual activity and then respond to it. The technology stands in contrast to traditional cyber security software that tries to build a wall around networks to block intruders. Some of its clients include BT Group (BT-A.L), and online grocer Ocado (OCDO.L).

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