Endpoint Protection Vendor SentinelOne Raises $200 Million, Eyes IPO

The Series E funding comes just eight months after SentinelOne closed a $120 million Series D round, and will help the fast-growing endpoint security vendor expand its geographic footprint in Europe and Asia.

SentinelOne Wednesday closed a $200 million funding round to expand its geographic footprint and fuel the hypergrowth needed for a successful initial public offering.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based endpoint protection startup said the proceeds from the Insight Partners-led round will help SentinelOne increase its headcount and coverage in Asia, as well as build on the company’s success in Southern Europe and the Persian Gulf states, according to Chief Marketing Officer Daniel Bernard.

The Series E funding comes just eight months after SentinelOne closed a $120 million Series D round, which was also led by Insight Partners. SentinelOne quickly pursued another funding round due to the massive growth it was seeing in its business as well as the significant consolidation in the endpoint security arena, with Cylance and Carbon Black being acquired by BlackBerry and VMware, respectively.

[Related: SentinelOne Raises $120M To Battle CrowdStrike, Cylance]

“We see this reducing to a two-horse race [between SentinelOne and CrowdStrike] in the endpoint security space,” Bernard told CRN. The latest funding round elevates SentinelOne’s valuation to more than $1.1 billion, making the company the latest unicorn in the cybersecurity arena.

SentinelOne expects to finish 2020 with around 700 employees, Bernard said, which would be more than double the company’s 330-person staff at the time of its Series D funding in June 2019. The company plans to aggressively expand its sales, marketing and channel staff, Bernard said, increasing headcount and coverage in emerging territories and adding field sales to support global growth.

The company should be in a good position to launch an IPO after delivering another four to eight quarters of momentum and growth, according to Bernard. SentinelOne doesn’t anticipate having to raise any more money prior to filing for an IPO, Bernard said.

From a product standpoint, Bernard said SentinelOne plans to use the funding to out-innovate its competitors and roll out new features more quickly around its core endpoint technology. The money will also help SentinelOne expand its footprint around emerging technologies like IoT security, container security and cloud workload protection (CWP), according to Bernard.

The SentinelOne Ranger IoT control tool has an edge over some of the more traditional standalone IoT security offerings since it can provide visibility and segmentation with just the click of a button, and doesn’t require customers to put a hardware box in every single office location, according to Bernard. Enterprises have indicated that discovering and controlling IoT devices is a top priority, Bernard said.

Although other security vendors also offer a platform, Bernard said SentinelOne’s Singularity Platform benefits from a single code base and deployment model since it was all built organically rather than dependent on acquisitions to move into the detection and response arena. From the Singularity Platform, Bernard said clients can understand what’s happening and leverage autonomous capabilities.

Going forward, Bernard said SentinelOne wants to continue delivering massive bookings, revenue and net new logo growth. At the same time, Bernard said SentinelOne is looking to keep its net customer retention rate above 100 percent by increasing spend from existing customers on a year-over-year basis by getting them to move beyond SentinelOne’s core offering and embrace some of its new capabilities.

“This is a perfect time for channel partners to look at SentinelOne and see why we’re winning,” Bernard said.