European funding will accelerate adoption of game-changing technology.
London, UK, 21 December 2021 – OutThink, the developer of the world’s first cybersecurity human risk management platform, is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a €2m grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) to accelerate the worldwide adoption of its technology designed to help organizations protect themselves from escalating cyber security threats.
Funding from the EIC is highly sought after by Europe’s most innovative start-ups with awards going to ambitious management teams with promising technologies and business models. OutThink was the only cyber-security firm, and one of just five UK businesses, to receive an award in the recently announced funding round.
Applicants for the EIC Accelerator are subject to a rigorous and competitive process involving an ideas screening stage, and full applications are assessed by external experts and an interview with a jury of experienced investors and entrepreneurs. The EIC has a track record of picking winners. During the pilot phase up to 2020 start-ups and SMEs supported by the EIC have gone on to reach a combined valuation of around EUR 50 billion, including 91 “centaurs” (company valuation over €100m) and 2 “unicorns” (company valuation over EUR 1 billion).*
OutThink was selected for its potential to save organizations €2.8 bn per annum globally through improved security awareness. Current approaches to security awareness training have limited impact in tackling cybercrime, because they neglect the fact that every individual is different. OutThink invented the new category of cybersecurity human risk management and takes a fundamentally different approach using machine learning and natural language processing, applied psychology, software telemetry, and security system integrations (a key focus for the EIC funding) to identify individuals’ attitudes and behaviors to understand, measure and manage individual human risk.
Flavius Plesu, CEO and Founder, commented:
“This award is a powerful endorsement of our technology and team and comes at a time when there is excellent momentum in the business following nearly four times growth in recurring revenues over the last year. OutThink is disrupting a space characterized by ineffective ‘tick box’ security awareness training solutions and this funding will help us accelerate our innovation programme and go to market plans.”
About OutThink
OutThink, the developer of the world’s first cyber-security human risk management platform, protects organisations around the world from cyber-threats by mobilising their people as their first line of defence. The company’s modern SaaS platform applies machine-learning and natural language processing to identify and measure human risk and to affect behaviour change through highly engaging and targeted micro-learning experiences. The OutThink platform was purpose-built by a team of visionary information security experts, researchers and technologists. Headquartered in the City of London, and with software development in the European Union, the company serves a global client base directly and through a network of partners.
About the European Innovation Council
The European Innovation Council (EIC) was established under the EU Horizon Europe programme to support game changing innovations throughout the lifecycle from early stage research, to proof of concept, technology transfer, and the financing and scale up of start-ups and SMEs. The EIC Accelerator offers start-ups and SMEs grants combined with equity investments through the EIC Fund. Since its launch in March 2021, over 4,000 start-ups and SMEs have sent their ideas and just 99 companies out of 1098 who submitted for the second cut-off on 6 October will receive awards totalling €627 million to help them bring their solutions to market.
