Big Names Keep Throwing Money At Shape Security, A Stealthy Startup

The list of investors backing stealthy startup Shape Security already reads like a Who's Who of Silicon Valley—and that's before the company announced another $20 million round today.

Shape was cofounded by ex-Googler Sumit Agarwal, who was head of Google’s mobile product management until he joined the Obama administration in 2010 as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. He founded Shape shortly after he left Washington in 2011.

This round, Shape's second, was lead by Venrock, the venture-capital arm of the Rockefeller family. Other investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Allegis Capital; Google Ventures; TomorrowVentures, a firm backed by Google chairman Eric Schmidt; and former Symantec CEO Enrique Salem.

The financing brings Shape's total raised to $26 million, including previous investments from Kleiner Perkins and executives at Dropbox, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, the company says.

Shape got tongues wagging in March when Google's Shuman Ghosemajumder joined. He had been working on click-fraud detection.

The company has been somewhat tight-lipped about its technology, but Business Insider recently got Ghosemajumder to spill a few beans about Shape. It's working on a technology that makes it harder for hackers to trick people into visiting malware-laced websites.

"Instead of trying to detect the attack, we provide deflection," Ghosemajumder told us. "We sit between the website and the users."

Stay tuned. We'll be talking to Agarwal later today and hope to hear more about this startup's cool new security tech.

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