A cybersecurity startup building a new type of communications and messaging platform has raised £2.2 million.
Worldr’s platform is built around privacy, security and data protection in team communication as government agencies, law firms, banking institutions and those handling sensitive information face growing security challenges due to the use of third-party communications platforms.
Some of the biggest names in deep tech, defence and finance have backed Worldr as it heads into public launch later this year following a six-month beta.
The seed investment is led by IQ Capital, the Cambridge-based deep-tech early stage VC and Playfair Capital, along with participation from cyber seed investors including CyLon (co-founded by Grace Cassy and Jonathan Luff), Andreas Wuchner (Group Head of IT & Risk at Credit Suisse) and Privitar Co-Founder, John Taysom.
Worldr aims to be the private & secure alternative to Slack, Teams and Whatsapp by utilising split-key encryption by default whilst ensuring that all conversations are stored locally within each company.
This means that businesses have total control over who holds and can access corporate data, conversations, and sensitive files.
In tandem with Worldr’s development of its private, secure & compliant communication platform, the UK tech firm has also built a wrap-around application for Microsoft Teams, which saw its usage double in the last year to 145 million users.
By utilising end-to-end encryption from the Signal protocol, Worldr’s ‘wrapper’ ensures that when a company uses Microsoft Teams, not even Microsoft, will have access to the conversations its employees are having.
Worldr plans to continue growing its line of ‘zero trust’ products throughout the rest of this year.
Max Buchan, founder and CEO, said: “I am beyond excited to announce today’s news of funding from such a high calibre of investors in the cyber space.
“There is much anticipation to open up Worldr fully this summer, following its beta trials earlier this year. We will offer a truly private-by-design team communication tool without sacrificing usability.
“At the same time, we’ve seen an unprecedented demand for our end-to-end encryption ‘wrapper’ for Microsoft Teams, much of which has been on the back of security questions around remote working and the meteoric rise of Teams as a platform itself.
“Working with our investors, we are hitting the ground running and investing in our substantial roadmap of zero-trust solutions for the enterprise.”