Brightmail was an e-mail filtering company in the United States. It was acquired by Symantec on May 19, 2004 for $370 million ... in cash.[1] The company was founded in 1998 (as "Brightlight") by Sunil Paul, and raised $55M in three rounds of venture capital led by Accel, TCV, and Symantec. The CEO at the time of acquisition was Enrique Salem, who later went on to become the CEO of Symantec, Inc before being deposed in 2012. [2] Brightmail's main focus is anti-spam products. The Brightmail name continued to be used by Symantec, and "Powered by Brightmail," until 2011 when most products were renamed or deprecated and known as Symantec Messaging Gateway (SMG). read more