Cocoon Data lands $5m in funding ahead of planned IPO

Christopher Pyne is advising secure file sharing start-up Cocoon Data, which has been buoyed by the recent forming of the AUKUS alliance.

Former minister Christopher Pyne is on Cocoon Data’s advisory board. Picture: Getty Images

Buoyed by the recent signing of the AUKUS security alliance, ­secure data sharing start-up ­Cocoon Data has secured an oversubscribed $5m funding round ahead of a planned IPO in coming months amid a rise in ­demand for secure file sharing.

With an advisory board that includes former defence industry minister Christopher Pyne, Cocoon Data has heavily targeted US defence supply contractors, who need access to sensitive information in the cloud and on mobile devices. Cocoon Data’s software, dubbed SafeShare, is an encrypted file-sharing platform used by businesses and governments, which can share and ­access files across the internet complying with numerous military and government security protocols.

“We’re in heavily regulated markets in the US, and we have over 100 customers and more than half of them are based in the US,” Cocoon Data chief executive Trent Telford said. “This is a great success story of Australian IP and R&D having success in the US, an area most would agree is pretty hard to crack.

“If you’re in the world of sensitive information, whether it’s healthcare or government or defence, there hasn’t been an easy way to share that really sensitive information without managing encryption keys across organisations, for example. We’ve solved that.”

The AUKUS alliance had been a boon for companies like Cocoon, Mr Telford said, given other markets such as the UK and US would now generally prioritise Australia when it came to choosing suppliers.

“It will really give us an ability to work very closely with the critical industries in those countries,” he said.

He said that the Pentagon last month finalised the biggest regulatory change for the defence supply chain in nearly 100 years, with Cyber Maturity Model Certification, which sets out a new level of security compliance for every organisation supplying top government and military.

This meant the multibillion-dollar Australian Defence export sector needed to address compliance, or faced the real risk of losing US Defence contracts, he said.

In order to deepen the company’s push in to the US and prepare for an IPO, Cocoon has bolstered its company’s leadership credentials with the appointment of Laura Moon-Taneyhill, a former Verizon and Amazon Web Services executive who will serve as Cocoon’s chief revenue officer out of Washington DC. It also raised $5m from a range of high-net-worth individuals and family offices ahead of its planned ASX listing for later this year. The company did not disclose its current valuation.

Cocoon Data’s advisory board now includes Jack Gumtow, the former CIO of the US Defence Intelligence Agency, as well as Robert Rodriguez, the founder and CEO of Sinet Executive and former special agent of the US Presidential Secret Service, as well as Mr Pyne.

Originally published as Cocoon Data lands $5m in funding ahead of planned IPO