Darktrace vs Abnormal Security

By valuation, Darktrace is the larger company at $5.3B versus $5.1B — a 1x difference. Size can also be measured by team: Darktrace employs 1000-5000 people while Abnormal Security has 650 employees.

Abnormal Security has raised more in total funding at $546M, compared to Darktrace's $230M — a gap of $316M. Combined, the two companies have completed 6 known funding rounds.

Darktrace leads with an Awaira Score of 85/100, while Abnormal Security sits at 80/100. That 5-point gap reflects real differences in funding, scale, and traction — it's not a vanity metric.

Darktrace was founded by Poppy Gustafsson in 2013. Abnormal Security was founded by Evan Reiser in 2018. Visit each company's profile on Awaira for a full founder biography.

Darktrace: Darktrace is an AI cybersecurity company that applies unsupervised machine learning to detect and respond to cyber threats inside enterprise networks, email systems, cloud environments, and operational technology. The Cambridge-based company pioneered the concept of the enterprise immune system, training AI models on each organisation normal network behaviour to identify anomalies that indicate intrusion, insider threat, or ransomware activity in real time without requiring predefined threat signatures.\n\nThe company went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2021, raising approximately $230 million in its IPO after backing from Invoke Capital, Vitruvian Partners, and KKR. Darktrace reports over 9,000 enterprise customers across more than 100 countries, including significant deployments in financial services, healthcare, and critical infrastructure. The company has expanded from network detection to autonomous response capabilities through its Antigena product, which can quarantine infected systems and neutralise threats without human intervention.\n\nDarktrace competes in the AI-native cybersecurity market against CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, and Microsoft Defender, as well as against SIEM vendors including Splunk and IBM QRadar. The company valuation and public market performance have been volatile, reflecting broader uncertainty around AI cybersecurity spending cycles and questions about autonomous response effectiveness in complex enterprise environments. Its AI self-learning approach, applied consistently across network, email, cloud, and OT security, remains a distinctive architecture compared to detection-rule-based competitors, and the Poppy Gustafsson leadership profile has made Darktrace a flagship case study for UK technology entrepreneurship. Abnormal Security: Abnormal Security is an AI-focused cybersecurity company founded in 2018 that specializes in email and cloud security. The company develops AI-powered threat detection systems designed to identify and prevent advanced email attacks, including phishing, business email compromise (BEC), and account takeover attempts. Its core platform uses behavioral AI and machine learning to analyze communication patterns and detect anomalies that traditional security tools miss. The company's technology focuses on cloud email environments, particularly Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, where it monitors user behavior, message content, and sender patterns in real-time. Abnormal Security has achieved a valuation of $5.1 billion following Series D funding, with total funding of $546 million. The company operates in a competitive landscape alongside established vendors like Proofpoint, Mimecast, and Cisco, as well as emerging AI security startups. Its positioning emphasizes reducing security alert fatigue through AI accuracy while preventing targeted attacks that evade traditional signature-based detection. The company has secured enterprise customers across various industries, though specific customer names are not widely disclosed. Growth trajectory indicates strong market demand for AI-driven email security solutions as organizations face increasingly sophisticated social engineering attacks. Abnormal Security represents the broader shift toward behavioral AI in enterprise security infrastructure. Abnormal Security applies behavioral AI specifically to email security, addressing a historically high-friction attack vector that traditional tools struggle to defend against effectively.

Darktrace got there first, launching in 2013 — that's 5 years of extra runway. Abnormal Security didn't arrive until 2018. In AI, that kind of head start means more training data, deeper customer relationships, and a bigger talent moat.

Darktrace has about 1000-5000 employees; Abnormal Security has about 650. A bigger team usually means more revenue or heavier VC backing, but in AI, small teams can build at massive scale.

Yes — they're direct rivals. Both Darktrace and Abnormal Security compete in AI Security, targeting many of the same buyers. If you're evaluating one, you should be looking at the other.