Recorded Future
Headquarters
Somerville, MAFounded
2009CEO / Founder
Christopher AhlbergEmployees
1001-5000Funding
Acquired — $58MProducts
1 product listedAvg. AI Score
8.0/10Website
recordedfuture.com/
Profile updated
About Recorded Future
Recorded Future is a threat intelligence company that collects and analyzes data from the open web, dark web, and technical sources to help organizations anticipate and prevent cyberattacks. The company was founded in 2009 by Christopher Ahlberg, Staffan Truvé, and Erik Wistrand, and is headquartered in Somerville, Massachusetts, with additional offices across North America, Europe, and Asia.
The company's Intelligence Cloud platform spans product lines including SecOps Intelligence, Brand Intelligence, Identity Intelligence, Vulnerability Intelligence, Attack Surface Intelligence, and Payment Fraud Intelligence, and integrates with tools from partners such as Splunk and Palo Alto Networks. Recorded Future received early backing from Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel, the CIA's investment arm, and serves more than 1,600 businesses and government agencies across over 70 countries.
Recorded Future raised roughly $58 million in venture capital from investors including Google Ventures, Insight Partners, Balderton Capital, and IA Ventures before Insight Partners acquired a majority stake for $780 million in 2019. In September 2024, Mastercard agreed to acquire the company from Insight Partners for $2.65 billion, finalizing the deal in December 2024. The company employs roughly 1,000 people and now operates as a Mastercard subsidiary.
Specialties
Financials
Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.
Products by Recorded Future
All products by Recorded Future reviewed by our AI panel of experts.
How Our Review Panel Scores Recorded Future
Six independent reviewer personalities assessed Recorded Future's product on their own terms. They landed within 0.9 points of each other, an unusually strong consensus.
Averaged across 1 reviewed product in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.
Competitive Landscape
Who Recorded Future competes with, and how they differ.
Owned by Google Cloud and built on Mandiant's frontline incident-response findings, it offers free-trial and consulting-led access, while Recorded Future sells only enterprise Intelligence Cloud subscriptions built on its own machine-collected data plus in-house Insikt Group research.
Anomali's ThreatStream is a threat intelligence platform (TIP) that aggregates and correlates third-party feeds inside a unified security data lake for SOC teams, whereas Recorded Future is itself a primary intelligence source with its own collection engine and analyst team rather than a feed-aggregation layer.
CrowdStrike sells Falcon Intelligence as an add-on tied to its own Falcon endpoint sensor telemetry, whereas Recorded Future is source-agnostic threat intelligence sold independently of any EDR agent, drawing on open, technical, and dark-web collection instead.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Palo Alto bundles Unit 42 threat research and Cortex Xpanse attack-surface management inside its firewall/XSIAM platform, competing directly with Recorded Future's standalone Attack Surface Intelligence module (from the 2022 SecurityTrails acquisition) and general threat-intel feeds.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedCompany Timeline
Key milestones in Recorded Future's history, with sources.
- Acquisition
Mastercard Completes Acquisition of Recorded Future
Mastercard finalized its acquisition of Recorded Future, closing the deal first announced in September 2024.
mastercard.com - Acquisition
Mastercard Agrees to Acquire Recorded Future for $2.65B
Mastercard announced an agreement to acquire global threat intelligence company Recorded Future from Insight Partners for $2.65 billion, expanding its cybersecurity, identity, and fraud-scoring services.
mastercard.com - Acquisition
Acquires SecurityTrails for $65M
Recorded Future acquired attack-surface monitoring company SecurityTrails, adding its Total Internet Inventory dataset as the new Attack Surface Intelligence module.
securityweek.com - Acquisition
Acquires Fraud Analytics Startup Gemini Advisory for $52M
Recorded Future acquired Gemini Advisory in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $52 million, expanding into financial-services and payment-fraud intelligence.
securityweek.com - Milestone
Crosses $100M in Annual Recurring Revenue
Recorded Future announced it exceeded $100 million in ARR, citing roughly 80% average year-over-year ARR growth over the prior five years and 317 new clients added in 2019.
recordedfuture.com - Funding
Insight Partners Acquires Controlling Interest for $780M
Insight Partners agreed to acquire a controlling interest in Recorded Future, in addition to the minority stake it already held, in an all-cash deal valuing the company at more than $780 million.
recordedfuture.com - Funding
Raises $25M Series E Led by Insight Venture Partners
Recorded Future raised $25 million in a Series E round led by Insight Venture Partners -- its fifth funding round, bringing total funding to approximately $58 million.
securityweek.com - Funding
Backed by Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel
Recorded Future's early institutional backers were revealed to include Google Ventures, the search giant's investment arm, and In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital fund.
abcnews.com - Founded
Recorded Future Founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Christopher Ahlberg (CEO) and Staffan Truve (CTO) founded Recorded Future, which grew into a leading threat- and security-intelligence company.
cyberscoop.com
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