Cato Networks, the renowned cloud security platform provider, has announced a significant fundraising achievement this week.
The firm revealed it has successfully garnered a whopping $238m in investment, valuing the business at a remarkable sum of over $3bn.
LightSpeed Venture Partners spearheaded this investment round, gaining notable backing from Adams Street Partners, Softbank Vision Fund 2, Sixty Degree Capital, and Singtel Innov8. As part of this financial partnership, Ravi Mhatre, the founder and managing director of LightSpeed Venture Partners, will take up a seat on the Cato board.
Diving deeper into Cato’s operations, the firm stands out for its innovative Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) offering. Pioneering this category, Cato Networks ensures remote workers maintain secure connections to their respective organisations. This service has proven pivotal, especially considering recent U.S. statistics indicating that 12.7% of the workforce operate remotely, while another 28.2% utilise a hybrid working model. Such working patterns present a tempting opportunity for hackers, necessitating the need for robust cyber security measures.
In terms of utilising the fresh capital, Cato has ambitious plans. They aim to magnify their global presence, collaborate with businesses providing managed SASE services via Cato, and bolster their product and development squads. The cybersecurity giant is on the lookout to recruit 200 additional employees in the forthcoming year. This would supplement their already impressive team of 865, of which 450 are stationed at their main headquarters and development hub in Israel.
Shlomo Kramer, the co-founder and CEO of Cato Networks commented on the fundraising, “This funding round reflects investor confidence in Cato’s leadership in the single-vendor SASE market,” he expressed. “Cato’s SASE platform uniquely enables organisations of all sizes to optimally secure their businesses without the cost, complexity, and risk of owning and maintaining a pile of point solutions. Cato provides the only SASE platform creating a seamless customer experience and empowers IT to move at the speed of business.”
To shed light on Cato’s past accomplishments, it’s noteworthy that Kramer, alongside Gur Shatz, founded Cato in 2015 after parting ways with Imperva by selling it to the Thoma Bravo investment fund for a handsome $2.1bn. More recently, Imperva changed hands again, being acquired for an even grander $3.6bn just two months ago.
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