BlackBerry today completed its previously-announced acquisition of Cylance, a privately-held artificial intelligence and cybersecurity company based in Irvine, California.
The acquisition is BlackBerry’s largest ever and will see Cylance operate as a separate business unit within BlackBerry’s business.
Cylance’s machine learning and artificial intelligence technology is a strategic addition to BlackBerry’s end-to-end secure communications portfolio. Notably, its embeddable AI technology will accelerate the development of BlackBerry Spark, the secure communications platform for the Internet of Things (IoT).
As the President of BlackBerry Cylance, Stuart McClure will continue to apply his visionary math-based approach to threat detection, prevention, and response, as well as lead the business’ large team of highly-skilled engineers and data scientists that deliver trusted products and services for more than 4,000 companies around the world.
John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry said,
Today BlackBerry took a giant step forward toward our goal of being the world’s largest and most trusted AI-cybersecurity company,
Securing endpoints and the data that flows between them is absolutely critical in today’s hyperconnected world. By adding Cylance’s technology to our arsenal of cybersecurity solutions we will help enterprises intelligently connect, protect and build secure endpoints that users can trust.
Cylance is a pioneer in applying artificial intelligence, algorithmic science, and machine learning to cybersecurity software that has proven highly effective at predicting and preventing known and unknown threats to fixed endpoints.
The firm has more than 3,500 active enterprise customers, including governments and more than 20 per cent of the Fortune 500.
The fast-growing company has become a market leader with an advanced and lightweight agent that resides on the endpoint, operates both online and off, and requires a minimum of memory and power to function.
Founded in 2012, Cylance generates highly recurring revenue from over 3,500 active enterprise customers, including more than 20% of the Fortune 500.
Financial information regarding BlackBerry Cylance will be made available during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call in March 2019.
