Carbon Black spent its first twelve years under another name. It began in 2002 as Bit9, a Massachusetts company that blocked any program not on an approved list. In 2014 it bought a small startup called Carbon Black, whose software recorded everything that happened on a computer, and in 2016 it took that name. When it went public in 2018, companies were losing faith in old antivirus tools. Carbon Black bet they would move their defenses to the cloud.

From Whitelist to Black Box

Bit9's first idea was strict. Instead of hunting for known viruses, it let only trusted software run. The Carbon Black deal added a second idea. Its sensor kept a record of every process on a machine, like a flight recorder, so investigators could replay an attack. The company joined the two and moved them onto its own cloud platform. By the end of 2017 it had more than 3,700 customers.

Nineteen Dollars, Then VMware

Carbon Black priced its IPO at $19 a share on May 4, 2018, and listed on Nasdaq as CBLK. It kept growing but kept losing money, and larger rivals crowded the market. In August 2019 VMware agreed to buy it for $26 a share. The deal valued Carbon Black at about $2.1 billion and closed in October 2019. Broadcom later bought VMware, and Carbon Black came along.

Cover: The Black Cat, Alphonse Legros. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a black cat (a watchful guardian).