Israeli cloud native application security company Snyk has announced the completion of a $300 million financing round co-led by Sands Capital Ventures and Tiger Global at a company valuation of $8.5 billion. This is the second highest valuation ever achieved by an Israeli founded startup in a financing round, "Reuters" reports, after the $8.75 billion valuation of fintech company Rapyd. In third place is business intelligence company Gong, which raised funds at a valuation of $7.25 billion.
Snyk has raised $950 million since the start of 2020 including $300 million in March at a company valuation of $4.7 billion. At the start of 2020 when Snyk raised money it was worth 'only' $1 billion. In addition to the new capital raised, investors will pay $230 million to buy existing shares of the company. In its previous financing round in March, Snyk's shareholders sold shares worth $125 million.
Snyk has developed a platform that identifies security breaches and open source licensing management issues for code and takes effective action. The company was founded in 2015 by president Guy Podjarny, who in 2012 had sold Blaze, the company he has previously founded, to Akamai. Podjarny founded Snyk with Assaf Hefetz and Danny Grander - all graduates of the Israel Defense Forces 8200 intelligence unit. In July 2019, Snyk appointed Peter McKay as CEO, an investor who has been involved with Snyk since its inception and an old friend of Podjarny.
Snyk's platform is based on a data bank of vulnerabilities. In addition, developers report the flaws, vulnerabilities and breaches they discover during their work to the system, so that the platform learns as it is used. This allows developers and DevOps to ensure that the code that they are writing is secured and operating properly, without disrupting their work flow.
Snyk is part of the popular B2B trend selling its products to enterprises and organizations, whereas in the past startups would contact DevOps and developers and provide them with the tools to solve their personal problems. But the new approach is called 'product-led growth' and is a buzz word in the cybersecurity industry.
Snyk is headquartered in Boston with its development center in Tel Aviv and offices in London, Ottawa, and Zurich.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on September 9, 2021
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