Arlington-based data privacy company WireWheel closed a $20M Series B

Arlington, Virginia-based WireWheel closed a $20 million Series B funding round led by ForgePoint Capital.

Founded in 2017, WireWheel combines machine learning and data analytics to provide new approaches to data protection and data protection regulations. The company provides a SaaS solution that supports all phases of a global privacy management and compliance program. This latest funding round was supported by existing investors New Enterprise Associates, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Fund, PSP Growth and Sands Capital Ventures. WireWheel has raised $45 million in venture capital to date.

“This funding will enable us to speed our go-to-market plans and extend our software-as-a-service platform’s leadership as the only solution built specifically for ease of use by privacy professionals and tailored to the needs of engineering and data governance teams,” WireWheel founder and CEO Justin Antonipillai told Technical.ly.

The company’s founder is a privacy and data protection expert who previously served as the acting under secretary for economic affairs at the U.S. Department of Commerce during the Barack Obama’s presidency. He now leads a team of approximately 50 to 60 full-timers at WireWheel, with some additional part-time employees. The company’s team is comprised of cloud architects, privacy experts, data scientists, policy experts and more. Antonipillai said this Series B helps WireWheel further accelerate its hiring plans as it’s looking to grow its product engineering, sales and marketing teams. Check out some open roles at the company.

With the close of this Series B, ForgePoint Capital’s Andrew McClure is joining WireWheel’s board of directors.

“Customers leverage WireWheel’s core privacy platform to get in compliance fast, and build privacy protection directly into their DevOps pipelines, their products, and their data use and governance programs,” McClure said in a statement. “We’re excited to work with the team at WireWheel to advance the company’s leadership in this fast-growing market.”

Antonipillai said that through the pandemic, the 2018 RealLIST Startups honoree has been busier than usual as privacy requirements around COVID-related data reporting have grown. He said new regulations like the California Privacy Rights Act have continued to drive awareness of and requirements for more data privacy, resulting in more demand for platforms like WireWheel’s. This year, WireWheel is mainly focusing on hiring and preparing for a few new product releases.

Are you doing business in California? Buying, selling, or sharing consumer #data? Take our Free #CCPA Compliance Training, where you’ll learn to honor subject requests, update your privacy pages, and design your products with #privacy in mind. Sign up >> https://t.co/phxzZGMCYl pic.twitter.com/YJyhghGsXw

— WireWheel (@wirewheel_io) January 28, 2021

“We are planning to continue to invest in our product to keep it ahead of where the market is currently,” Antonipillai said.

The company is not just working to help companies build better privacy practices, but it invested in helping more people become knowledgeable on the topic. Last year alone, the company released the WireWheel Developer Portal to allow companies to build privacy and data protection directly into their products and made its enterprise infrastructure available for startups and small businesses through its new Essentials offering. WireWheel also launched a new privacy tech conference in December called Spokes that offers free privacy training and courses.

“Our mission,” Antonipillai said, “is to make enterprise-grade privacy infrastructure available to companies and organizations of all sizes right from the beginning. We believe privacy is a fundamental human right and are glad to be able to partner with organizations to help them put the technical infrastructure in place to do this the right way.”