Munich Re pays $575mn for At-Bay, and the "insurance plus security" premium vanishes

Munich Re said on Wednesday it has agreed to buy the cyber-insurance startup At-Bay for $575mn, a price below half the company's 2021 mark ^[1]. At-Bay was valued at $1.35bn in its last funding round in 2021, according to Calcalist's CTech, which puts the sale at roughly 43% of that figure, a markdown of about 57% ^[2][1].

The arithmetic is the story. At-Bay has raised about $276mn since it was founded, CTech reported, so $575mn is roughly 2.1 times the capital put in ^[19][2]. Munich Re describes At-Bay as a top-10 US cyber insurer with gross written premiums of $278mn ^[11], which makes the enterprise value roughly 2.1 times premium ^[3]. That is an insurance multiple, not a software multiple. Whatever the market was paying in 2021 for the "InsurSec" bundle of cover plus At-Bay's own security tooling ^[7], it is not paying it now. CTech attributed the decline to tougher conditions in the technology and insurance markets since 2021 ^[3], and At-Bay's route to the exit included layoffs, among them a large part of its development team in Israel, as insurance-market changes and rising interest rates weighed on the business ^[18].

The underlying book looks solid rather than spectacular. At-Bay says it protects close to 40,000 US businesses covering up to $800bn of their combined revenue ^[12]. Against $278mn of premium ^[11], that is an average of roughly $7,000 per customer per year, on insured businesses averaging up to $20mn of revenue each ^[4][6]. This is genuine small-business volume, priced accordingly.

For buyers, the operational fact is the destination. At-Bay will sit inside Hartford Steam Boiler, Munich Re's cyber-focused specialty unit, which has backed the company since its early days ^[5][17]. Hartford Steam Boiler chief executive Jeffrey O'Shaughnessy said the deal would connect insurance, security and claims into one continuous system ^[17]. Munich Re framed the purchase as a bet that the market is shifting from standalone policies towards platforms that bundle insurance with security, and said small firms face the same threats as large companies without the staff and tools to defend themselves ^[13][14]. Mike Kerner, a member of Munich Re's board, called At-Bay "a perfect addition to our specialty insurance portfolio" and said he expected it to become a strong earnings driver over time ^[16].

None of that happens soon. The deal is not due to close until the first quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and customary conditions, Reuters reported ^[4]. That is a long interval for a company of about 280 people across the US and Israel ^[10] selling continuously monitored policies ^[8], plus technology and professional-liability cover and a managed detection-and-response product ^[15]. Co-founder and chief executive Rotem Iram cast the sale as a way to scale, saying Munich Re would help At-Bay "close the cybersecurity protection gap for the 90% of businesses being left behind" ^[20].

It is Munich Re's second large purchase of an Israeli-founded insurtech: its ERGO arm bought the rest of Next Insurance for about $2.6bn in March 2025, roughly 4.5 times the At-Bay price, CTech noted ^[21][5]. Munich Re reported insurance revenue of EUR 60.4bn in 2025 ^[22], so At-Bay's premium base is a rounding item that has to earn attention on merit.

Watch three things through the long close: whether the security software stays free-standing or gets folded into HSB's underwriting stack; whether At-Bay's development headcount in Israel holds after the earlier cuts ^[18]; and whether renewal pricing for those 40,000 small businesses ^[12] moves once a reinsurer owns the loss ratio. This was a rare large insurtech acquisition in a sector that has cooled since its 2021 peak ^[6], and the multiple is now the reference point for everyone else still holding a 2021 valuation.