Shift5, an onboard data company, has landed some $33 million in Series B funding led by Moore Strategic Ventures with additional backing from Booz Allen Hamilton’s venture capital arm, Teamworthy Ventures and JetBlue Ventures.
The capital infusion brings the Series B round to $83 million and Shift5’s total venture funding to $108 million.
Shift5 Grows Defense Industry Presence
Created by former officers of the U.S. Army Cyber Command, Shift5 defends commercial transportation systems and military platforms against operational failures and operational technology (OT) cybersecurity risks.
The investments come amid significant growth for Shift5. In the last year the defense contractor said it has more than doubled its annual recurring revenue and its number of customers across Department of Defense (DoD) and commercial aerospace and rail sectors. Shift5 also grew the rate of its platform deployments on commercial and DoD vehicles and weapon systems by 1,275%.
In the last year, Shift5 has:
- Secured a 92% retention rate with in-production customers across the DoD and commercial sectors
- Captured more than 8,500 operational hours from commercial and military fleets and weapon systems
- Increased the size of its deployment in a Fortune 500 commercial airline by 25%
Company officials said the financing will be used to fuel the infrastructure supporting Shift5’s growing commercial and federal businesses as it expands to tackle the challenge of onboard observability.
Shift5 said that in the last year its platform processed more than 37 billion messages from its deployments. It also identified more than 20 billion unique events occurring at the serial bus level.
From these events, Shift5 flagged 1.8 million violations. Among these violations, Shift5 elevated six critical alerts on customers' systems that required action and led to three assets moving from a non-compliant to a compliant status.
Shift5 Partners with Jet Blue Airlines
The deal comes on the heels of an agreement between Shift5 and Jet Blue Airlines to partner on a project to bring cybersecurity and data observability of onboard avionics to commercial aircraft, and the company’s first cross-platform Authority to Operate (ATO) Certification from the DoD.
Commenting on the capital investments, Josh Lospinoso, chief executive and co-founder of Shift5, said:
“The work Shift5 does is foundational — the endless data we capture, add context to, analyze and provide insights around creates a wholly new paradigm for fleet operators and maintainers to make decisions. And in the context of innovations and modern threats, this level of specificity is needed. Our expanded round not only validates the successes of the Shift5 business, but will help us support overall safer, more reliable, and resilient commercial transportation and military fleets."
The strategic investment is the first by Booz Allen Ventures aligned with the firm’s National Cyber business, which uses a comprehensive view of the cyber landscape and intelligence-grade tradecraft to unlock stronger defensive solutions and deploy full-spectrum cyber capabilities.
Commenting on the partnership with Booz Allen partnership, Lospinoso said:
“Our partnership with Booz Allen will create new ways for our defense, aviation, and rail customers to analyze and action the onboard data from fleets that they’ve historically lacked access to, reducing decision latency and enabling them to stay ahead of critical cybersecurity and operational risks. Doing this allows operators to modernize legacy systems, build next-gen fleets, and improve readiness and availability of critical OT systems.”
Shift5 suppports multiple branches and combatant commands of the U.S. military, including U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Space Force, and U.S. Special Operations Command.
