Inforcer raises 50 million dollars to shield small businesses from AI and cybersecurity risks

London-based startup Inforcer has closed a $50 million Series C led by Insight Partners; the company's other investors include Dawn Capital and Meritech Capital, although the source does not specify whether they took part in this round. What stands out is not only the amount, but the pace: in just 18 months the company has strung together three rounds totaling $110 million, doubling its valuation between the Series B and the Series C, though it has not disclosed the specific figure.

Inforcer does not sell cybersecurity directly to small and medium-sized businesses; instead it builds the software used by managed service providers (MSPs) to administer all their clients' Microsoft 365 accounts from a single platform. It is an indirect model, but one with plenty of room to grow: most SMBs cannot afford an in-house IT department, so they outsource that function to MSPs, which in turn need increasingly sophisticated tools to serve more clients amid growing technical complexity.

According to chief executive and co-founder Jamie Daum, the business is growing 300% year over year, and the nearly back-to-back rounds have been necessary because cyber threats and AI itself are evolving very fast. Since its launch in 2023, the company has channeled much of the capital into product development, with two specific bets: a 'Shadow AI' detection feature (to identify when employees use unauthorized artificial intelligence tools on company devices) and a real-time threat detection and response tool.

Co-founder and chief community officer William Connor stresses that the attack landscape has changed in nature: these are no longer campaigns planned over months, but attacks executed in minutes. Attackers use AI to analyze what is vulnerable at a company and rely on large language models to write more convincing phishing emails. For SMBs, Daum says, this translates into threats that are 'more automated, more scalable and harder to defend against than ever'. Connor adds that, beyond external attackers, there is also concern about data governance risks and the use of AI and agents inside organizations themselves, a front the company is already factoring into its planning.

The product expansion comes with a change in commercial model: its original tool, 365 Manager, was charged per managed client, while the new threat detection product is moving toward per-user pricing, a scheme Daum considers better aligned with the way MSPs sell these solutions to their own customers. Looking ahead, he does not rule out that some AI-linked products could adopt consumption-based or token-based pricing models.

For now, Inforcer is keeping its focus on the Microsoft ecosystem, given the vast base of SMBs still using that set of tools, and plans to step up its expansion in the United States. On the risk that Microsoft could end up building equivalent features on its own, Connor is unfazed: he argues that the tech giant has historically focused on platforms for large enterprises, leaving room for specialized providers serving smaller, more segmented customers. 'We see ourselves as complementary to Microsoft, not as competitors,' he sums up.