BlackBerry Limited agreed to acquire Cylance, a privately-held develop of cybersecurity solution, for US $1.4 billion in cash, plus the assumption of unvested employee incentive awards.
“Cylance’s leadership in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity will immediately complement our entire portfolio, UEM and QNX in particular. We are very excited to onboard their team and leverage our newly combined expertise,” said John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO of BlackBerry. “We believe adding Cylance’s capabilities to our trusted advantages in privacy, secure mobility, and embedded systems will make BlackBerry Spark indispensable to realizing the Enterprise of Things.”
Cylance’s cybersecurity software leverages artificial intelligence, algorithmic science, and machine learning. The approach has proven highly effective at predicting and preventing known and unknown threats to fixed endpoints. The company generates recurring revenue from over 3,500 active enterprise customers, including more than 20% of the Fortune 500.
“Our highly skilled cybersecurity workforce and market leadership in next-generation endpoint solutions will be a perfect fit within BlackBerry where our customers, teams and technologies will gain immediate benefits from BlackBerry’s global reach,” said Stuart McClure, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Cylance. “We are eager to leverage BlackBerry’s mobility and security strengths to adapt our advanced AI technology to deliver a single platform.”
BlackBerry is developing Spark as a next-generation secure chip-to-edge communications platform for the EoT. The company says its platform is designed for ultra-security and industry-specific safety-certifications, such as ISO 26262 in automobiles. BlackBerry Spark will leverage the company’s deep portfolio of technology that includes FIPS-validated, app-level, AES 256-bit encryption to ensure data is always protected.
