By Ella Jacoby
Globes, April 2, 2000
Start-up company Whale Communications of the BRM group has raised $23 million in a private placement. The company’s value for the financing round was not disclosed, but is estimated at $100 million, after money. This is Whale’s second financing round.
Whale provides a secure communications platform for protecting access via the Internet to critical business applications. The capital raised in the financing round will be used to expand the company’s marketing network and support the company’s US headquarters.
Whale was founded in November 1998 by Elad Baron (CEO) and Daniel Steiner (president). In the past, the two set up Softlink. In July 1999, Whale conducted a financing round from the BRM group. Investment bank Goldman Sachs, the Soros fund, and the BRM group led the round. Other participants included US information security company Network Associates, investment bank Dain Rauscher Wessels, and private investors.
Whale’s system enables companies to offer external users online access to an organization’s internal network. In this way, a company can offer its customers various services, such as e-commerce, customer management, billing management and online banking.
The Whale system offers an information security solution, enabling the prevention or detection of penetration into an organization’s internal network. The system maintains a physical barrier between a company’s internal and external networks, using designated hardware installed between the Internet and the company’s internal network.
Network Associates is one of the world’s leading providers of security and access solutions to companies operating in an Internet environment. BRM is an investment company focusing on Israeli companies at the seed or later stages, operating in the Internet infrastructures sector. BRM also invested in CheckPoint, BackWeb, IPHighway, and Brio Technologies.
Published by Israel’s Business Arena on 2 April, 2000