Estonia-based Blackwall has raised $100 million at a $2.2 billion valuation to help hosting providers cope with surging bot traffic, including swarms of AI agents. The Series C was led by AVP, with participation from Dawn Capital, MMC Ventures and Tera Ventures. Executive chairman Roi Carthy said the round lifted valuation four times since the previous fundraise in 2025. For businesses, this matters because control over automated traffic is becoming a paid layer of web infrastructure.
Channel model and Series C terms
Blackwall builds web traffic security tools and sells them through web hosting, managed service and cloud providers rather than directly to websites. Those providers receive a bundle of tools they can customize, offer to their own clients under their own branding, and keep control of the customer relationship. Hosting companies can mix and match security components, set their own prices for end customers, and share a cut of revenue with Blackwall. The company first gives customers a free tier that shows traffic and threats hitting their network, then charges for protection and tools to address those threats.
At the technical level, Blackwall examines customer web traffic to separate actual visitors and legitimate AI agents from malicious bots, intruders and disruptive requests. Co-founder and CEO Nikita Rozenberg said the company uses digital fingerprinting to identify the software sending a request, for example Microsoft Office or Codex, to filter out bots. It also runs its own AI models at customer endpoints to analyze intent and behavior of incoming requests. That second layer is meant to distinguish an agent sent by a person for a real request from a malicious bot pursuing a different goal.
The round lands amid growing pressure on web infrastructure firms such as Cloudflare, Akamai, Imperva and Blackwall. They stand on the front line against DDoS attacks, indiscriminate scraping, botnet farms and malicious requests, now joined by large numbers of AI agents. That position is difficult because unwanted traffic keeps growing in volume and variety, yet it is commercially valuable as websites and hosts look for protection. Blackwall plans to use the funding to expand across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, while developing more security tooling for hosting, cloud and managed service providers.
What this means for companies using AI
For companies that run websites or sell through hosting partners, bot management is shifting from a background setting into a business decision about access and cost. Services in the Blackwall bundle include threat intelligence, certificate management, DDoS protection and traffic routing, alongside filtering of automated visitors. A small firm will likely meet these tools as an option inside its hosting plan, with pricing set by the provider. A large company with several providers may get more consistent rules for which automated traffic is allowed, blocked or monitored.
The limits sit in accuracy, control and commercial terms rather than in the idea of filtering itself. Fingerprinting and behavior analysis still need verification in live traffic, especially as legitimate agents and unwanted bots use similar automation patterns. Buyers should ask how the system labels Microsoft Office, Codex and other known software, how often those labels are updated, and what recourse exists for false blocks. The news by itself does not mean hosting providers will charge AI crawlers or that every agent will need explicit authorization and payment terms.
The marker to watch is whether hosting providers start offering agent access rules as a standard part of their security packages. Rozenberg points to a future where AI agents interact and transact with websites on behalf of users, requiring systems to manage access, terms and payment authorization. Cloudflare already offers AI Crawl Control to allow, block or charge individual AI crawlers. If more hosts roll out comparable controls through Blackwall, automated access will turn into a negotiated commercial channel.
