Illumio Eyes $250M Funding Round At $2.9B Valuation: Report

Illumio is looking to raise about $250 million in a Thoma Bravo-led funding round that values the cybersecurity company at about $2.9 billion, Bloomberg reported.

Illumio is looking to raise about $250 million in a Thoma Bravo-led funding round that values the cybersecurity company at about $2.9 billion, Bloomberg reported.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based zero trust segmentation vendor has increased its revenue by nearly 1,400 percent over the past three years and is the 83rd fastest-growing technology company in North America, according to Deloitte. Thoma Bravo declined to comment, while Illumio didn’t respond to a CRN request for comment.

The Series F funding round would come more than two years after Illumio closed a $65 million Series E round led by J.P. Morgan Asset Management that valued the company at $1.67 billion, according to Pitchbook. Illumio first achieved unicorn status in 2015 – just two years after the company’s founding – when the company closed a $100 million Series C round led by Accel and BlackRock, PitchBook reported.

[Related: The 10 Hottest Zero-Trust Vendors To Watch In 2021]

The expected backing from Thoma Bravo would increase Illumio’s outside funding to more than $580 million since the company was established in 2013. Illumio has increased its headcount by 12 percent over the past year to 403 people, with most of the hiring coming in the company’s sales organization, which has grown by 39 percent during that period, according to LinkedIn.

Thoma Bravo, meanwhile, has been in the headlines this week for its proposed $12.3 billion purchase of email security vendor Proofpoint, which would be the biggest cybersecurity acquisition of all-time. The private equity giant’s cybersecurity holdings include email and network security player Barracuda; security information and event management vendor LogRhythm; application and data protection vendor Imperva; application security vendor Veracode; and SMB platform security stalwart Sophos.

Illumio was the top-rated vendor in last year’s Forrester Wave for Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Platform Providers, with the firm praising Illumio for bridging the gap in security beyond the perimeter via its partnership with CrowdStrike. Should Illumio move to securing mobile devices via partnership or internal development, they would be the shining star of what zero trust is all about, Forrester said.

As far as the channel is concerned, Illumio said on its website that it works with a select group of business partners that have strong software application and network security skill sets, according to the company’s website. Illumio’s most significant technology partners include Amazon Web Services, Citrix, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, ServiceNow and Splunk, according to the company’s website.

Illumio delivers end-to-end zero trust micro-segmentation from the data center and cloud to endpoints to stop the spread of ransomware and bad actors. The company said it protects against lateral movement across users, end-user devices, applications, workloads, network devices, servers, and other infrastructure.

Illumio Edge, meanwhile, protects remote user devices from the spread of ransomware whether on the network, remote, or using public Wi-Fi. It also whitelists peer-to-peer application connections across laptops and endpoints.

The company was co-founded by Andrew Rubin and PJ Kirner, who had previously worked together at intrusion detection vendor Cymtec. Illumio’s customers include prominent enterprises such as Morgan Stanley, BNP Paribas, Salesforce, Oracle NetSuite, BlueCross BlueShield, Cathy Pacific and MGM, according to the company’s website.