Cloud Security Firm Netskope Raises $340 Million To Fulfill Demand

The Series G funding round will allow Netskope to achieve a valuation of nearly $3 billion, making it one of the most valuable venture-funded pure-play cybersecurity vendors in the world.

Netskope has hauled in $340 million from new investor Sequoia Capital Global Equities to address global demand and cement its leadership position in cloud-delivered security.

The Series G funding round will allow Netskope to achieve a valuation of nearly $3 billion, making the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company one of the most valuable venture-funded pure-play cybersecurity vendors in the world. Netskope said it has grown its enterprise customer base by 80 percent on a year-over-year basis, and now services 25 percent of the Fortune 100.

“The latest investment from the top enterprise and security investors in the world is proof of not only our enormous success in establishing Netskope as the new gold standard for cloud-delivered security, but also that the astounding level of global demand we’re seeing today is just the tip of the iceberg,” Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri said in a statement.

[Related: Cloud Security Vendor Netskope Raises $169M For Global Expansion]

Netksope was founded in 2012, employs 990 people, and has now raised $740 million in seven rounds of outside funding. The latest funding from Sequoia Capital comes just 15 months after Netskope closed a $168.7 million Series F round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Sequoia Capital was founded in 1972 and has invested in companies that today have an aggregate public market value of more than $3.3 trillion. Sequoia Capital in April 2019 led a $65 million Series C funding round for Internet of Things security startup Armis, which was purchased nine months later by private equity giant Insight Partners for $1.1 billion.

“Netskope has become the unrivaled leader driving innovation across cloud, data and network security, which makes up the largest part of today’s security market,” Sequoia Capital Global Entities Managing Partner Patrick Fu said in a statement. “Sanjay and the entire Netskope team are on an incredible trajectory, and we are thrilled to partner with this talented team for the long term.”

Over the past year, the company has unveiled Netskope Private Access, a cloud-based service for secure access to private enterprise applications in both the public cloud and data center. Netskope also launched NewEdge, a globally distributed network that enables the company’s cloud-native platform to deliver real-time security without compromising performance.

Netskope said it grew employee head count by nearly 50 percent over 2019, with significant investments in engineering and sales. Key executive hires included former Amazon Web Services executive Joe DePalo as senior vice president of platform engineering in November 2018, former Fortinet and Citrix Systems executive Drew Del Matto as CFO in May, and Chief Development Officer David Wu.

After years of consolidation, Netskope is today one of the final major stand-alone cloud access security brokers (CASBs) on the market. The CASB deals began in 2015 with Microsoft’s buy of Adallom, ran into 2016 when Cisco Systems, Oracle and Proofpoint bought CloudLock, Palerra and FireLayers, respectively, and continued in 2017 with Forcepoint and McAfee’s acquisitions of Skyfence and Skyhigh Networks, respectively.

Netskope is one of just five vendors named as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Access Security Brokers, alongside fellow stand-alone CASB player Bitglass as well as Microsoft, McAfee and Symantec (which bought Blue Coat Systems in 2016).