As part of the Merchant Banking Division of Goldman Sachs, GS Growth is the firm’s investment platform dedicated to providing preferred equity and mezzanine capital to high-growth companies. As of June 2019, Goldman Sachs' investing groups (Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, Principal Strategic Investments, and Private Capital Investing) have combined to form the GS Growth team. The team targets investments of $20-250 million.

GS Growth

Francisco Partners is a global investment firm that specializes in partnering with technology and technology-enabled businesses. With $7 billion of capital under management, Francisco Partners is one of the world's largest technology-focused private equity funds. The firm was founded to pursue structured investments in technology companies undergoing strategic, technological, and operational inflection points. Francisco Partners targets control investments in private companies, with transaction values ranging from $30 million to $2 billion. The principals of Francisco Partners have invested in excess of $3 billion of equity capital in over 50 technology companies.

Francisco Partners

NightDragon is an investment and advisory firm focused on growth and late-stage investments within the cybersecurity, safety, security and privacy industries. Its platform and vast industry network provide unparalleled threat insights, deal flow, market leverage and operating expertise to drive portfolio company growth and increase shareholder value. Founded by Dave DeWalt, the NightDragon team has more than 25 years of operational and market expertise leading technology companies such as Documentum, EMC, Siebel Systems (Oracle), McAfee, Mandiant, Avast and FireEye. Read more about NightDragon at www.nightdragon.com.

NightDragon

iboss

iboss has created the first and only web gateway as a service specifically designed to solve the challenge of securing distributed organizations. Built for the cloud, the iboss Distributed Gateway Platform leverages an elastic, cloud-based node architecture that provides advanced security for today’s decentralized organizations with more financial predictability. Users are always connected to iboss cloud, regardless of device or location, to ensure all Internet traffic is secured for compliance, web filtering, malware defense, and data loss at all times. The company was founded in 2003 and is based in Boston, Massachusetts.

iboss offers cloud security services under the secure access service edge (SASE) architecture that enables companies to deliver web gateway proxies, network firewalls and zero trust network access solutions through the cloud. iboss serves organizations operating in industries including healthcare, financial services, education, and government.

AI-based solutions for evolving digital threats

Next-gen Cybersecurity

iboss offers cloud security services under the secure access service edge (SASE) architecture that enables companies to deliver web gateway proxies, network firewalls and zero trust network access solutions through the cloud. iboss serves organizations operating in industries including healthcare, financial services, education, and government.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2024, the company was backed by more than 230 patents, over 100 points of presence (PoP) across the world and a client base of over 4,000 organizations across more than 150 countries. Further, as of the same date, the company claims that its platform prevented more than 4 billion threats a day. Notable clients as of February 2024 included Verizon, Comcast, Christus Health, and Citrix.Funding and financialsIn its last funding round in January 2021, iboss raised USD 145 million in Series B funding led by NightDragon and Francisco Partners. The company expected to use the funds to accelerate the growth of its SASE platform.

Cato Networks is a cybersecurity provider specializing in cloud network security, offering a range of services through its secure access service edge (SASE) platform. The company takes an integration-based approach to network security, combining various security services into a single cloud-based platform. This integrated platform is designed to cover a wide spectrum of security needs, including threat prevention, data protection, and secure access for users and devices across the internet, WAN, and cloud environments.Cato Networks has developed a cloud-native architecture that offers a blend of security and networking capabilities, leveraging a global private backbone to ensure secure and efficient connectivity. This backbone reportedly supports over 80 Points of Presence (PoPs) worldwide, ensuring high availability and performance with an uptime of over 99%. Additionally, the platform leverages AI and ML for incident detection and autonomous operations, aiming to reduce complexity and operational overhead for IT teams​​​​.Cato Network claims it pioneered the concept of SASE, offering a similar networking and security architecture as early as 2015, prior to the recognition of SASE by Gartner and the wider industry. In January 2024, Cato <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25945">announced</a> an extended detection and response (XDR) solution based on its SASE platform, using existing architecture to sidestep issues such as long deployment times, limited data quality, and a lack of comprehensive investigation and response capability.Key customers and partnershipsThe company claims to have served multiple Fortune 500 companies as of February 2021. As of February 2024 it had reportedly served 2,000+ enterprises across 32,000+ locations and 800,000+ remote access ZTNA users across 150+ countries. Notable customers as at February 2024 included Carlsberg, Ring Central, Hafele, Boyd CAT, Juki, and Vitesco Tech.In terms of partnerships, Cato Networks collaborates with various technology and service providers to enhance and distribute its solutions. These partnerships are aimed at expanding its market reach and integrating its services with complementary technologies. Notable partnerships have been formed with cloud providers and network service vendors, including with Windstream Enterprise to offer a fully managed SASE solution in North America.Funding and financialsCato Network’s most <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22015">recent</a> funding round was in September 2023, where it raised USD 238 million in funding in a round led by LightSpeed Venture Partners, at a valuation exceeding USD 3 billion. The company expected to use the funding to grow its partner ecosystem, expand its customer base, and increase headcount, specifically in its product and engineering divisions. Cato Networks reportedly plans to go public by 2024.During 2022, Cato reported an ARR of over USD 100 million, with YoY revenue growth of 60%, and a gross retention rate of over 95%.

Cato Networks

Netskope provides cloud security solutions for enterprises that include cloud-delivered secure web gateways (SWGs), cloud access security brokers (CASB), and other solutions to manage access to cloud workloads. These solutions help companies monitor the use of cloud applications and identify suspicious behavior. Netskope’s tools attempt to replace legacy solutions such as VPNs. In April 2023 Netskope announced <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17658">the addition of a new software-defined wide area network</a> (SD-WAN) service to its platform, designed to provide enterprises with the ability to ensure secure access to their infrastructure from endpoint devices in any location. Netskope planned to offer the new SD-WAN alongside its existing SSE product to provide a unified SASE client, which it claimed was an industry first.In June 2023, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19604">Netskope updated its secure service edge (SSE) platform</a> to help address data leakage risks of generative AI applications like ChatGPT. The updated platform allowed organizations to track usage of generative AI applications, manage access controls, and automatically prevented upload of sensitive information.Netskope <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10845">acquired the IoT security startup,</a> WootCloud in June 2022 integrating WootCloud’s HyperContext Security platform with its Intelligent Security Service Edge (SSE) platform to expand its SSE and Zero Trust capabilities. This was followed by the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12036">acquisition of cloud networking vendor</a>, Infiot in August 2022 to deliver an integrated single-vendor SASE platform to its customers by leveraging Infiot’s technologies to offer a uniform security and quality of experience (QoE) policies to the Netskope Borderless WAN. Netskope most recently <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21650">acquired</a> digital experience management company Kadiska, in September 2023, to monitor entities across its SASE ecosystem and proactively remediate issues. Key customers and partnershipsNetskope’s product offerings were backed by more than 100 global patents as of January 2023, and the company served more than 2,500 customers globally across industries such as financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, and retails, including more than 25 of the Fortune 100 as of February 2024. Notable customers included Christus Health, Aspen Snowmass, Ascensus, Ross, USPTO, and PDC Energy.Netskope has partnered with several companies to expand its cloud security offering and expand its market reach, with notable partnerships as of February 2024, including Microsoft, CrowdStrike, Mimecast, and Okta.Netskope <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15413">partnered </a>with Stellar Cyber, a open extended detection and response (Open XDR) startup in December 2022, to provide a joint solution that incorporates rich user-centric data to improve control and visibility of risks and threats across incident investigations conducted by Security Operation Center (SOC) analysts.In July 2021, Netskope partnered with cybersecurity company, Chillisoft, to accelerate sales for cloud-based SASE protection to 1,250 resellers and integrators, including more than 100 managed service providers (MSPs) across New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. The company also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24249">announced</a> a partnership with telecommunications company Telstra in November 2023 under which Telstra would distribute Netskope’s SASE and ZTNA solutions globally.Funding and financials&nbsp;In January 2023, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15521">raised USD 401 million in convertible notes</a> led by Morgan Stanley Tactical Value. The funds were utilized to accelerate platform development and expand its go-to-market strategy.

Netskope

SentinelOne is a cybersecurity company that offers an autonomous AI-based platform for endpoint security. Its flagship product, the Singularity platform, integrates AI to detect, respond, and protect against threats across all enterprise environments, including cloud, IoT, and mobile. SentinelOne aims to differentiate itself by offering real-time, autonomous protection with minimal human intervention, leveraging machine learning for threat detection and response. The platform's capabilities extend to delivering endpoint protection, detection, and response (EDR), and IoT security, positioning SentinelOne as a comprehensive cybersecurity solution provider. SentinelOne <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17965">launched</a> a new generative AI platform for threat detection in April 2023, designed to allow security teams to run threat detection and automated remediation operations using natural language instead of code based commands.&nbsp;In November 2023 the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23867">launched</a> a new, unified version of its Singularity platform, Singularity Unity, with upgraded cloud and endpoint security and data lake capabilities, as well as a GenAI cybersecurity assistant. Unity incorporated SentinelOne’s “PurpleAI” models to simplify investigations, governance, and compliance and improve metrics such as mean time to detect/resolve (MTTD/MTTR).SentinelOne acquired cloud data-logging startup Scalyr in February 2021 for USD 155 million to bolster its own XDR capabilities and entered into an agreement to <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9176">acquire</a> the identity threat detection and response (ITDR) startup Attivo Networks for USD 616.5 million in March 2022, with plans to integrate Attivo Networks’ capabilities into its Singularity XDR solution to provide autonomous protection. The company also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25209">acquired</a> PingSafe, a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) for an undisclosed sum in January 2024, integrating the former’s dynamic monitoring technology to enhance multi-cloud workload visibility. Key customers and partnershipsSentinelOne caters to a wide range of industries, including finance, healthcare, education, and government, indicating its platform's versatility and scalability. Among its notable customers are Samsung, Aston Martin, Estée Lauder, and Autodesk.SentinelOne’s partnerships range from integrations with cybersecurity providers to enhance its capabilities to integrations with cloud platform providers as well as partnerships to increase the reach of its product through alliances with service providers.Recent partnerships include an <a href="https://www.sentinelone.com/partners/partner-overview/">alliance</a> with cloud network security provider Wiz in March 2023 to provide end-to-end cloud security solutions by leveraging each company’s platform. The joint solution was claimed to detect and remediate cybersecurity threats faster than stand-alone platforms.The company also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25042">partnered</a> with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/616943">Stellar Cyber</a> in December 2023 to integrate the latter’s Open XDR platform with its own solution, offering customers a unified, automated threat detection and response platform. In the same month, it partnered with managed solutions provider <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/25457">SecureWorks</a> to integrate its SecureWorks Tagis ManagedXDR with its own Singularity Complete solution.SentinelOne has previously partnered with managed detection and response (MDR) providers such as Red Canary and Deepwatch, and other cybersecurity vendors such as Palo Alto, Fortinet, Zscaler and Cloudflare.Funding and financialsIn June 2021, SentinelOne <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/3850">commenced</a> trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker “S,” raising USD 1.2 billion in its initial public offering (IPO) at an implied valuation of USD 8.9 billion. The company expected to use the proceeds for working capital, product development, capital expenditure, and administrative matters. The company also aimed to use part of the funds to acquire and invest in complementary businesses and technologies. SentinelOne <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13278">launched </a>“S Ventures”, a USD 100 million venture fund, to invest in enterprise cybersecurity startups, in September 2022. S Ventures invested in Armorblox, an API email security platform, and Noetic Cyber, a continuous cyber asset management and controls platform. These companies joined its portfolio companies which include Torq, a no-code security automation platform, and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1695999">Laminar</a>, a cloud-native data security startup.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17067">FY2023</a>, the company reported a revenue of USD 422.2 million, representing a YoY growth of 106% and an adjusted gross margin of 72%. The company saw its annual recurring revenue (ARR) growing at 88% to close at USD 548.7 million and the number of customers grew around 50% YoY to exceed 10,000 in Q4 FY2023. Management guidance for revenue for FY2024 stands in the range of USD 631 million and USD 640 million.

SentinelOne

Lacework is a cloud security company offering solutions for enterprises to protect their cloud and container workloads at scale. These include tools that employ automation and machine learning in order to enable developers to build cloud applications securely, along with tools to monitor multi-cloud environments, detect misconfigurations and threats, and identify behavioral anomalies during runtime.Additionally, in November 2023, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24135">announced</a> a unified application security platform, adding software composition analysis (SCA) and static application security testing (SAST) to its existing capabilities, aiming to tackle security issues prior to application deployment.Lacework acquired Soluble in November 2021 to bolster its DevSecOps capabilities.Key customers and partnershipsLacework counts companies such as Snowflake, Lendingtree, Fubo TV, Zoox, Klaviyo, Verifone, TSB, and Clari among its clients as of February 2024.The company has established partnerships with cloud providers and security technology companies to enhance its platform's capabilities and integration potential. Lacework partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) in June 2023 to incorporate its composite alerts into Amazon’s GuardDuty threat detection service, providing AWS users with enhanced threat alerts and context for investigation. The company also announced an expanded partnership with SnowFlake in September 2023 for unified visibility and custom automation.Funding and financialsIn November 2021, the company raised USD 1.3 billion in Series D funding at a valuation in excess of USD 8.3 billion. The round was led by Sutter Hill, Altimeter Capital and a number of external investors, with notable participation from customer Snowflake. The company expects to use the funding to scale its business globally.During 2020, the company experienced its second consecutive year with revenue exceeding 300% year-over-year.

Lacework

CrowdStrike offers a collection of next-generation cybersecurity products for endpoint security, cloud security, managed services, and threat analysis and response, along with professional services and consulting.CrowdStrike’s endpoint security solutions include a cloud-delivered, next-generation antivirus (NGAV) that uses machine learning, artificial intelligence, and behavioral analytics to detect threats in company endpoints, replacing traditional signature-based solutions. In addition, CrowdStrike’s endpoint offering also includes endpoint detection and response (EDR) for comprehensive monitoring, along with features to centrally control external device use. CrowdStrike’s protection is delivered to the endpoint through a lightweight agent, which the company claims to be easily deployable and takes up only a minor share of the endpoint’s processing power. The agent has the ability to identify malicious behavior even when the endpoint is offline. The company’s cloud security offering includes tools for enterprises to detect threats and identify vulnerabilities during development and runtime of cloud-native applications. In addition, CrowdStrike also offers managed services, including technologies and human resources for companies to detect threats and respond to security incidents.In April 2023, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17659">the company announced “Falcon Insight for IoT” </a>, an EDR and extended detection response (XDR) solution for extended internet of things (XIoT) assets, expanding the protection capabilities of Crowdstrike Falcon to operational technology.CrowdStrike launched a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18980">generative AI assistant, “Charlotte AI” </a>, for its Falcon platform in late May 2023. The AI allows security teams to ask natural language questions on cybersecurity status, threats, and vulnerabilities, and surfaces actionable insights from Crowdstrike Falcon.CrowdStrike has undertaken various acquisitions to strengthen its product offerings. The company acquired the cloud data logging company Humio for USD 400 million in February 2021 to bring in the capabilities required to offer an extended detection and response (XDR) platform. The company acquired the data security startup <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6341">SecureCircle </a>in November 2021 to extend zero trust security to data on endpoints by integrating SecureCircle’s technology into its Core Falcon platform. This will provide users with data usage policy enforcement and data access management based on their zero trust score and ensure that clients can detect and respond to threats at the device, user identity, and data layer. CrowdStrike acquired the Israel-based external attack surface management (EASM) startup <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13200">Reposify </a>in September 2022. Reposify scans the internet infrastructure of an organization to detect and eliminate any risks arising from exposed assets that are centralized or remote across on-premise, cloud, etc. Reposify leverages its proprietary algorithm and a large database of internet-facing assets to provide organizations with a comprehensive view of their external attack surface with a click of a button. Other acquisitions include the identity protection company Preempt Security for USD 96 million in September 2020, and malware analysis company Payload Security for an undisclosed amount in 2017.Key customers and partnershipsCrowdStrike expanded its footprint in Australia in July 2021 by partnering with local cybersecurity company Solista to assist Australian organizations in developing a toolset and framework in assessing their zero trust readiness, while detecting and remediating internal and external threats.CrowdStrike <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9177">partnered </a>with the cloud network security platform, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1102212">Adaptive Shield </a>in March 2022, to launch the latter’s zero-trust SaaS security posture management solution in CrowdStrike Store and enable security teams to identify and remediate risks stemming from misconfigurations and misappropriated privileges through device posture visibility and continuous risk assessment across the SaaS stack.In April 2022, CrowdStrike <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9660">partnered </a>with Mandiant to help joint customers with breach investigation and response and defense. As part of the partnership, CrowdStrike's cloud-based Falcon threat intelligence platform was integrated with Mandiant’s incident response (IR) and proactive cybersecurity consulting services.In September 2022, CrowdStrike <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13203">partnered </a>with the pure-play cyber insurance startup <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/604136">Coalition </a>, to protect 160,000 cyber insurance policyholders of Coalition against cyber attacks and help them comply with key contingencies required for a cyber insurance policy. CrowdStrike provided the policyholders with a 15-day free trial to its CrowdStrike Falcon platform alongside the option to purchase a discounted Falcon bundle. During the same period, CrowdStrike <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13160">partnered </a>with the API security startup, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/376753">Salt Security </a>, to integrate the latter’s API discovery with its Falcon runtime protection on applications to provide a comprehensive view of an organization’s attack surface and accelerate threat detection and response. The company also invested an undisclosed amount in Salt Security’s Series D funding round.In March 2023, CrowdStrike <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16868">formed a strategic alliance </a>with technology infrastructure and services provider Dell Technologies. Through the alliance, the companies planned on providing combined cyber defense solutions for organizations of all sizes to protect endpoints, cloud workloads, identity, and data.Crowdstrike partnered with Google in April 2023 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17705">to combat phishing campaigns </a>, leveraging its AI analytics to detect malicious links and submit them to Google’s Risk API, allowing the firm to display browser warnings.As of October 2021, CrowdStrike had 14,687 subscribers, comprising both public and private sector organizations. Key clients include companies such as Sony, Telstra, Rackspace, Sega, and ADP.Funding and financialsThe company went public through an initial public offering in June 2019, raising USD 610 million at a valuation of USD 6.7 billion. In a subsequent fundraise in January 2021, the company raised USD 750 million through eight-year unsecured notes. CrowdStrike also launched a USD 100 million investment vehicle—Falcon Fund II in partnership with the venture capital firm Accel in January 2022, which is 5x larger than its initial investment fund Falcon Fund, and serves as a catalyst to expand CrowdStrike’s technology partnerships with companies that will gain access to CrowdStrike Store and can benefit from CrowdStrike’s expertise and knowledge base.CrowdStrike’s total revenue for FY2023 amounted to USD 2.24 billion and adjusted operating profit was USD 355.6 million, both up 54% and 81.2% YoY, respectively. Management guidance for revenue for FY2024 stands in the range of USD 2,955.1 million and USD 3,014.8 million, which implies an YoY growth of 31.9% to 34.6%, respectively.

CrowdStrike

Solutions in this industry hub are offered under a B2B SaaS model

Uses AI/ML and behavioral analysis to proactively detect threats and/or automate response

Protects IoT and connected devices from cyberattacks

Blockchain used to deploy platforms and store and verify data for tamper-proof security

Uses generative AI that allow automated cybersecurity workflows and manages security operations using natural language

Companies that provide platforms and technologies to protect enterprise data and infrastructure in the cloud from internal and external threats.

iboss

Next-gen Cybersecurity

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