Waterloo, Ont, and Irvine, Calif., Nov. 19, 2018: BlackBerry Limited recently announced it had entered into an agreement to wholly acquire Cylance, an artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity company for US $1.4 billion in cash, plus the assumption of unvested employee incentive awards. The deal is expected to close prior to the end of BlackBerry’s current fiscal year (February 2019), said Blackberry in a press release.
Said John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO of BlackBerry, “We believe adding Cylance’s capabilities to our trusted advantages in privacy, secure mobility, and embedded systems will make BlackBerry Spark indispensable to realizing the Enterprise of Things.”
Cylance is a pioneer in applying AI, algorithmic science, and machine learning to cybersecurity software used for predicting and preventing known and unknown threats to fixed endpoints. Founded in 2012, Cylance generates highly recurring revenue from over 3,500 active enterprise customers, including more than 20 percent of the Fortune 500.
BlackBerry Spark is a next-generation secure chip-to-edge communications platform for the EoT that will create and leverage trusted connections between any endpoint. Designed for ultra-security and industry-specific safety-certifications, such as ISO 26262 in automobiles, BlackBerry Spark will leverage the company’s deep portfolio of technology that includes FIPS-validated, app-level, AES 256-bit encryption to ensure data is always protected. BlackBerry Spark enables organisations to comply with stringent multi-national regulatory requirements. In fact, BlackBerry is the only EoT platform provider to achieve Common Criteria EAL4+ for both iOS and Android, offering a very high form of security in the market.