Blackwall

Product overview

Blackwall (legally BotGuard OÜ, rebranded in March 2025) is an Estonian bot management and web security company that sells through hosting providers and managed service providers rather than directly to end users. The company's GateKeeper product is a reverse proxy deployed within hosting partners' own infrastructure, meaning customer data never leaves the partner's network. This architecture makes it particularly suited to European data sovereignty requirements under GDPR. Founded by Nikita Rozenberg (CEO) and Denis Prochko (CTO), Blackwall has raised approximately €57 million in total funding. Its March 2025 Series B round of €45 million was led by Dawn Capital (Europe's leading B2B investor), following a €12 million Series A in March 2024 led by MMC Ventures. The platform protects 2.3+ million websites and applications through 100+ hosting and MSP partners globally. Services include AI-powered bot detection, WAF (OWASP Top 10), layer 7 DDoS protection, brute-force prevention, content scraping protection, ad fraud prevention, and a built-in layer 7 load balancer. Blackwall claims its traffic optimization reduces hosting providers' infrastructure costs by 10 to 25 percent. The company employs roughly 65 to 78 people. KEY FEATURES: - Channel-first model deploying on hosting providers' own infrastructure, protecting 2.3M+ websites - AI-powered bot management, WAF, L7 DDoS protection, and ad fraud prevention - €57M+ total funding from Dawn Capital, MMC Ventures, Tera Ventures - Reduces partner infrastructure costs by 10-25% through traffic optimization - Estonian-owned, GDPR-friendly architecture where customer data stays on partner networks

Sovereignty