Distil Networks, a provider of bot detection and mitigation services who says that about 30% of its business is with travel companies, today said it has closed $21 million in Series C financing.
Silicon Valley Bank participated in the funding, as did existing venture investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Foundry Group, and TechStars.
The fresh funding brings Distil's total raised to date to $65 million. The company plans to double its workforce from today's 140 and make other resource investments.
Before Facebook, Microsoft, and other companies changed the connotation of bots to a positive thing, bots referred mainly to software for web scraping, account takeovers, competitive data mining, online fraud, and forced downtime.
Bots and scrapers can pose a serious threat to a travel site’s revenues, sales and overall brand image, Distil says.
Earlier: An analysis by Distil on how to defend online travel margins against web-scraping bots