Netskope’s new funding and valuation comes at a time when investors have been pouring record amounts of money into cybersecurity startups. Venture capital dollars flowing to the space rose to $12.5 billion in the first half of this year, according to CB Insights, exceeding the amount raised in all of 2020. A recent high-profile hacking of meat producer JBS and a separate one of the country’s largest oil pipeline, Colonial Pipeline, have only emphasized the need for more cybersecurity protection for all businesses.įor ICONIQ Capital partner Ben Bernstein, the logic behind the investment is that companies are increasingly moving their operations onto the cloud. The pandemic, meanwhile, has increased remote work, strengthening the need for security and data protection of the sort provided by Netskope. Still, a rising cybersecurity tide lifts all boats, which raises questions as to how the company plans to compete against rivals such as Zscaler or McAfee, or vie for dollars against businesses with less overlap, but that also focus on digital security like SentinelOne. Bernstein says he believes that there’s room for many players, especially if they have different approaches to cybersecurity. “If you are a chief information security officer, it’s like an onion. You always put in multiple layers of protection,” he says.Ĭurrently unprofitable, Netskope plans to expand quickly with its new money. While the company has made acquisitions in the past, Beri notes that he favors organic growth-though he says he’s open to future acquisitions for talent or tech. The company also plans to hire, to reach a headcount of nearly 1,700 by the end of the year, versus 1,400 today. “There’s such a big opportunity we’re not going to shortchange ourselves.” “For us, this is grab land, grab market share,” says Beri. The latest funding, a Series H, means Netskope is running short of letters it can use to denote further private financing rounds. Joking aside, Beri says this is likely his company’s final funding before an initial public offering. When Netskope plans to go public, however, remains unclear. While it seems like a good time for cybersecurity companies to IPO-shares of CrowdStrike are up 131% in the past year while Zscaler stock has increased 86%-Beri appears to be in no hurry. “I think we can say this will be our last really private round,” says Beri. Some of its high-profile customers include Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O), Gilead Sciences Inc (GILD.O), Cleveland Clinic and Levi Strauss & Co (LEVI.N).A Tesla “recall” applies to nearly every car the company has sold in China.But we don’t have a set timeline.” More must-read tech coverage from Fortune : “The reality is, could we be public now? Yes. The company had raised $340 million in a late-stage funding round led by Sequoia Capital Global Equities in February last year, which valued the company at $3 billion. It has more than 40 patents and over 1,000 employees. Netskope was founded by engineers who had previously worked at security and networking companies such as Palo Alto Networks (PANW.N), Juniper Networks (JNPR.N), Cisco (CSCO.O) and VMware (VMW.N), its website showed. As enterprises transform their legacy IT infrastructure and move applications and data to the cloud, security needs to transform as well," Netskope said in a statement. "Cybercrime is increasing at an alarming rate. The COVID-19 pandemic also forced companies to shift to a remote working model, driving demand for cloud security measures. Also, about 61% of malware is delivered from the cloud.īusinesses globally are battling to protect their data-rich computers from cyber crime and there are no signs such costly attacks will stop anytime soon. Netskope's platform provides protection for sensitive data stored in Inc's (AMZN.O) Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) Azure and Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) owned Google's Cloud Platform.Īccording to a Netskope threat report, around 53% of web traffic is related to cloud activity as more businesses move online. ICONIQ Growth had previously invested in tech giants including Alibaba (9988.HK), Airbnb Inc (ABNB.O) and Uber Technologies Inc (UBER.N). Other major existing investors of Netskope, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Accel, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Base Partners, Sapphire Ventures and Geodesic Capital, also participated in the funding round, Netskope said. July 9 (Reuters) - Netskope said on Friday its valuation more than doubled to $7.5 billion after a $300 million funding round led by ICONIQ Growth, highlighting massive demand for cloud security services as cyber attacks increase in number and severity.
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