Passbolt, intending to establish itself as the ultimate password manager for SMBs, has successfully secured $8 million. The seed-funded venture aspires to branch out to enterprise-level clients eventually.
The France-based CEO, Kevin Muller, asserts that the existing password management tools, including Bitwarden and 1Password, are primarily service consumers, rendering them unfit for serving well-coordinated organizations. He noted that these tools are fragmented and most of them can’t intercommunicate, functioning solely as standalone units.
Muller, along with Remy Bertot and Cédric Alfonsi, launched Passbolt in 2017, deriving roots from the much-renowned open source password manager, KeePass. However, KeePass had major shortcomings as it lacked a mechanism for access control and auditing, which led to the inception of Passbolt.
Over the years, Passbolt has made notable additions to its platform, extending features like desktop apps, password rotations, two-factor authentication, and granular access control. Muller indicated an upcoming feature for managing passkeys while expressing intentions to challenge enterprise-central services such as CyberArk.
Passbolt offers a community edition free of charge, allowing users to self-host, in addition to a Pro version providing added features like LDAP provisioning, activity logs, and more. While the software is used by about 38,000 teams for free, there are also 2,000 users who pay for Passbolt’s services. Passbolt emphasizes that their codebase undergoes regular audits and maintains SOC2 Type II certification.
Passbolt reached profitability in the summer of 2024, but the firm decided to raise more capital to fuel growth. Netherlands-based Airbridge Equity Partners led the company’s Series A round, marked by several other investors’ participation.
Rick van Boekel from Airbridge Equity Partners stated that the demand for Passbolt’s more collaborative, enterprise-grade solution shows a gap in the current market, filled inadequately by legacy password managers and Privileged Access Management solutions.
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