Cybersecurity team collaborating on a complex threat analysis in a server room.
Venture capital firm Exfinity Venture Partners has announced a partial exit from cybersecurity startup CloudSEK, generating a 13-fold return on invested capital (MOIC) and a 40% internal rate of return (IRR). The transaction, which occurred in January, involved Exfinity selling a portion of its stake to an existing investor in CloudSEK.
Chinnu Senthilkumar, managing partner at Exfinity, confirmed the partial exit, stating that the firm retains a significant stake in CloudSEK and continues to hold a board seat. Exfinity initially invested in CloudSEK in 2018 during its $1.9 million Pre-Series A funding round and participated in its $7 million Series A round in 2021.
CloudSEK, founded in 2015 by Rahul Sasi, is an AI-powered cybersecurity platform designed to help businesses monitor systems and predict cyber threats. The startup recently secured $10 million in a Series B round, which included participation from Connecticut Innovations (CI), the venture capital arm of the US state of Connecticut, aimed at accelerating its North American market entry.
Exfinity Venture Partners, established in 2014, focuses on deeptech investments. The firm typically takes a 10-20% stake in its portfolio companies and actively supports their go-to-market strategies and global expansion. The partial exit strategy aims to provide periodic returns to limited partners (LPs) once portfolio companies achieve a MOIC of 10 or above.
This exit from CloudSEK follows Exfinity’s recent partial exits from martech platform Pixis and full exits from AI edge chipmaker Kinara and logistics platform Locus. These exits have contributed to Exfinity’s Vintage Fund II achieving a distributions to paid-in capital (DPI) of 1, indicating that LPs have received their initial investments back.
Exfinity is actively deploying capital from its other funds. Its Fund III, which closed at ₹500 crore in 2023, has backed 18 startups, with average ticket sizes ranging from $2 million to $3 million. The firm’s newly announced Fund IV, targeting ₹1,100 crore, will focus on sectors such as computing, robotics, physical AI, and energy, with investment checks between $4 million and $5 million, potentially participating in Series B or C rounds.
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