Ballistic Ventures Targets $490 Million for Two New Funds

By Daniel Okafor

Ballistic Ventures has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to seek $490 million across two new funds, according to the firm's Form D filings.

The structure includes a $360 million flagship, Fund III, and a $130 million vehicle, Fund B. TechCrunch reported the filings on November 3. Neither fund had recorded any sales, and Ballistic declined to comment on its fundraising plans.

What does Ballistic back with the funds?

Startup Fortune reports that Ballistic was co-founded in late 2021 by Ted Schlein, a former general partner at Kleiner Perkins; Barmak Meftah, who ran AT&T Cybersecurity; and Roger Thornton, who built Fortify Software and AlienVault. The firm invests exclusively in cybersecurity startups.

Fund III would match the size of the firm's 2024 fund, Fund II. The proposed vehicle would also preserve Ballistic's $130 million commitment to a separately targeted second book rather than consolidating both strategies into one pool.

Earlier portfolio exits include Talon Cyber Security, which Palo Alto Networks bought, and Pangea, which CrowdStrike acquired. Ballistic's active portfolio also includes Armadin, GetReal, Nudge Security and Oligo Security.

How is AI changing the opportunity?

GetReal sits close to a rapidly growing security problem. Startup Fortune says it exists specifically to detect deepfakes, including cloned voices and faces used to fool bank-transfer approvals. Generative AI also lets attackers draft convincing phishing emails and generate new malware variants.

AI-enabled companies accounted for 72% of U.S. cybersecurity venture deals through May 2026, up from 36% in 2019, according to TechCrunch. The 36-point gain moved AI-linked security from a minority of American venture deals to the center of U.S. cybersecurity investment.

The source report also cites a separate AI infrastructure round. Bessemer Venture Partners led $1.3 billion, with Nvidia, Sound Ventures and T. Rowe Price also investing in the startup.

Startup Fortune reports that the startup's CEO admitted it had to rate-limit customers this summer. A related report describes the AI inference company's valuation as doubling to $16 billion and calls the round the fastest-growing AI infrastructure startup funding round.

How large is the cybersecurity funding backdrop?

Crunchbase pegged U.S. cybersecurity startup funding at $11.5 billion in 2025, the highest total since 2022. Crunchbase News put global cybersecurity and privacy funding at $18 billion for the year.

The difference reflects how each tracker defines cybersecurity and which funding stages it includes, Startup Fortune says. The totals are not directly comparable, but they point in the same direction.

Money that left cybersecurity during the 2022 and 2023 pullback has returned faster than in most other software categories, according to Startup Fortune. AI has increased both the volume of threats and the number of specialized products built to address them.

Can Ballistic close the full $490 million?

Ballistic's fundraising history shows the scale of the rebound. It launched with a $300 million debut fund in 2022 and closed an oversubscribed $360 million Fund II in 2024. The new $490 million target would arrive barely two years later and support materially larger investments.

The two-vehicle structure would let Ballistic write larger growth-stage checks for later-stage companies and smaller seed bets near the start of its pipeline. Startup Fortune notes that other specialist firms have used similar structures, but they require enough deal flow to justify running two books at once.

SEC Form D filings state fundraising intent rather than confirm a closed fund. Ballistic's own $100 million SEC filing from April 2025 illustrates how a target can change before the firm locks in its limited partners.

What has to go right?

Startup Fortune identifies deepfake detection, AI agent monitoring and machine identity management as emerging defense categories. Generative AI lowers the cost of producing convincing attacks while making some defensive tasks harder to automate.

Ballistic's strategy rests on a broad pipeline of founders building point solutions for those gaps. The firm is betting that specialist focus and $490 million in proposed capital can make it the first call for those founders.

For Ballistic, the next checkpoint is whether investors fund both vehicles at the requested sizes. The $130 million Fund B matters as much as Fund III because it would widen the firm's reach without reducing capital for later-stage deals.