Stuart McClure, who co-founded internet security company Cylance Inc. 11 years ago, predicts a bright future for two businesses he’s leading now: cybersecurity company Qwiet AI and incubator NumberOne AI.
“Both in their own ways are growing very nicely,” McClure, an Orange County resident, said. “They’re going great.”
McClure is the CEO of San Jose-based Qwiet, which “prevents cyberattacks at the source of the problem, at the root of the problem, which is source code.”
The firm, previously known as ShiftLeft, has about 50 employees. It was rebranded to Qwiet in February “to reflect their ability to reduce the noise inherent in the AppSec space,” the company said in a statement at the time. ShiftLeft, meanwhile, is a more “common word” among coding experts.
“I see with Qwiet the ability to prevent against 100% of cyberattacks by empowering developers to code securely,” McClure said.
ShiftLeft, as the company was known before the rebranding, raised an additional $29 million last year.
McClure in 2021 founded Newport Beach-based NumberOne AI.
“We build companies that solve big problems using AI and machine learning.”
Though the company aims to solve big problems, it’s “tiny” in size, McClure notes, and employs fewer than 12 employees.
The company last year said it had raised $13 million in financing, and later announced the appointment of industry veteran Chris Hatter as operating partner.
“We want to grow consciously and purposefully and try to scale to demand versus build and grow into it,” McClure says of the two firms.
McClure remains based in OC. He’s a member of the CEO Leadership Alliance Orange County, which among other initiatives is looking to boost the area’s base of next-generation businesses and create an inclusive tech talent hub focused on AI.
BlackBerry Ties
McClure co-founded Irvine-based Cylance a little more than a decade ago and sold it in 2019 to Canada-based BlackBerry Ltd. (NYSE: BB) for $1.4 billion.
He served as president of BlackBerry Cylance—now called BlackBerry Cybersecurity—for eight months following the sale.
BlackBerry earlier this month said it intends to separate its Internet of Things business and cybersecurity business units.
While McClure said he didn’t have “too much inside baseball” information about such a move, he said it does make sense.
He notes that BlackBerry has “struggled to continue to grow the cybersecurity business” along with IoT.
“Having a whole new dedicated team to build cybersecurity products sounds like the perfect solution,” according to McClure.
Awareness
This month is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and McClure notes the importance of taking simple-sounding defensive measures.
“Hypervigilance is always really important,” McClure said.
That includes complex passwords with two-factor authentication and simply not clicking on suspicious links.
