Salesforce-Backed Tanium Quietly Raising New $200M Round

The new round, on top of the $900 million the company previously raised, likely means that Tanium is the most valuable non-public cybersecurity company in the industry.

Security vendor Tanium, which has previously raised funding from Salesforce, has almost finished a quiet new round of equity funding that has vaulted the total investment in the company to around $1 billion.

The new round of funding was unveiled Monday in an SEC Form D filing, which is a notice of exempt offering of securities, in which Tanium said it already sold $150.5 million of a total of $200 million offered to a total of 26 investors so far.

Prior to this round of funding, Emeryville, Calif.-based Tanium had raised a total of $900 million over 11 rounds of funding, according to Crunchbase. Its last round of funding, reported by Crunchbase to be just over $117 million, came from Salesforce Ventures, according to Tanium and Crunchbase.

[Related: 8 Hot New Tanium Features Unveiled At Tanium Converge 2019]

It is unclear if the June Salesforce Ventures investment is included as part of this funding round. Whether or not that is the case, the $1 billion or so invested in Tanium likely makes it the most valuable cybersecurity vendor which has yet to hold an IPO. Among those listed on the regulatory filing: Mary Agnes Wilderotter, the former CEO of Fronteir Communications; and Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz.

When contacted by CRN, a Tanium spokesperson replied the company would respond some time Monday, but had yet to respond by press time.

Tanium Co-CEO Orion Hindawi told CRN in November 2019 that his company has purposely avoided going public despite the huge amount invested in the company, including two nine-figure funding rounds in 2018 alone, because he does not subscribe to a pervasive myth that being a public company is a measure of success.

“The reality of the situation is that public companies often end up making bad decisions to service a short-term shareholder,” Hindawi said. “I don’t want to trip into that situation for the wrong reasons. Eventually, it may be the perfect situation for Tanium, but I don’t think it is today.”

Being a public company can be a very painful-looking thing, Hindawi said at the time.

“And, by the way, I’ve heard it from a lot of my peers over a dinner table that this is just not soul-nourishing for them at all,” he said. “I would rather be able to serve our customers well. And I know that, if we can keep focus on that instead of on quarterly earnings call and all kinds of other machinations, that the rest of it will work its way out.”

Michael Novinson contributed to this story.