Data privacy tech startup WireWheel raises $20m in Series B funding for market expansion

WireWheel, a data privacy technology platform, announced $20 million in Series B financing led by ForgePoint Capital, with existing investors New Enterprise Associates, Revolution's Rise of the Rest Fund, PSP Growth, Grotech and Sands Capital Ventures also participating in the round, bringing total capital raised by the company to $45 million. 

The funding will enable WireWheel to speed its go-to-market plans and extend its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform's leadership as the only solution built specifically for ease of use by privacy professionals and tailored to the needs of engineering and data governance teams. Andrew McClure of ForgePoint Capital will join WireWheel's board of directors.

Justin Antonipillai, Founder and CEO, WireWheel: "We are proudly delivering a cloud-based, technology-first privacy platform to some of the biggest brands in the world. Our mission is to make this enterprise-grade privacy infrastructure available to every company, so that everyone can responsibly protect personal data and ethically use it to solve their business problems. ForgePoint is the perfect partner for the next stage of our growth, and we are proud to partner with this team on our journey."

WireWheel's SaaS Platform supports full cycle global privacy management for organizations large and small. The Company's Privacy Operations Manager automates data discovery, inventories, privacy assessments, incident management, and privacy compliance throughout a company and its partner and vendor ecosystem. The Trust Access and Consent product enables consumer controls and access to their data. Through these offerings, companies not only comply more quickly with global privacy laws, like the European GDPR and California CCPA, but can enable greater, more responsible use of personal data by bridging between compliance and governance systems.

Andrew McClure, Principal, ForgePoint Capital: "WireWheel's best-in-class software orchestrates trust for privacy teams who don't just want to check a box. That's why some of the most privacy-mature organizations look to the team at WireWheel not only for domain expertise, but also for unmatched product sophistication. Customers leverage WireWheel's core privacy platform to get in compliance fast, and build privacy protection directly into their DevOps pipelines, their products, and their data use and governance programs. We're excited to work with the team at WireWheel to advance the company's leadership in this fast-growing market."

In the last year, WireWheel released the WireWheel Developer Portal to enable technology-driven companies to build privacy and data protection directly into their products; launched the WireWheel's Spokes Privacy Technology Conference, now one of the largest privacy conferences in the world, to offer free access to the best privacy knowledge and training; and made its enterprise-grade privacy and data protection infrastructure available for every startup and SMB through its "Essentials" offering.

Penny Pritzker, Chairman and Founder, PSP Partners: "From the beginning, we recognized WireWheel as a company that will act as a catalyst for privacy protection and innovation. The key has been that WireWheel is focused both on helping companies comply with privacy laws around the world, and on helping them ethically use data to solve customer problems. Just think of how much can be accomplished with greater trust and transparency regarding data between companies and their valued customers. WireWheel can help drive that change."

Michael Graninger, Partner, Sands Capital Ventures: "WireWheel's leadership team truly understands privacy and they're doing industry-leading work to help innovators build trusted products and services. Building trust in tech requires a seamless way to incorporate privacy into products from day one and WireWheel is leading that effort."

Justin Antonipillai is recognized as one of the leading experts on privacy and data protection, having led a number of high-priority international efforts around privacy and security as Acting Under Secretary for Economic Affairs at the U.S. Department of Commerce during the Obama Administration. The WireWheel team also comprises privacy experts, data scientists, cloud architects, PhDs, policy experts and others with deep domain expertise around data, privacy and building trust in the digital era. 

wirewheel.io