SentinelOne’s MSSP Partners Are Driving ‘Standout Growth’: CEO Tomer Weingarten

The SentinelOne co-founder and CEO also responded to questions about the termination of a cloud security deal with Wiz and a report saying the company is exploring going private.

SentinelOne’s longstanding commitment to enabling MSSPs is paying off as the cybersecurity vendor is finding “standout growth” from its managed security partners, SentinelOne Co-founder and CEO Tomer Weingarten said Thursday.

At multiple points during SentinelOne’s quarterly call with analysts, Weingarten credited MSSPs as a driving force behind the company’s strong results from its latest quarter, which surpassed Wall Street expectations in spite of the uncertain economic environment.

“From the beginning, we’ve built our business by enabling our partners instead of competing with them,” Weingarten said.

[Related: SentinelOne CEO On Microsoft’s Security Copilot: ‘It’s A Nice Chatbot’]

The company’s “differentiated platform capabilities” in terms of multi-tenancy, automation and remote management have made SentinelOne a “foundational platform” for many MSSPs, he said.

Meanwhile, customer demand for outsourced management of cybersecurity has continued to rise due to factors including a shortage of available talent, Weingarten said. “Despite recent macro-related industry headwinds, the demand for managed security remains strong,” he said.

Ultimately, thanks to the favorable demand and SentinelOne’s prioritization of managed security partners, the company is “in the early innings of a massive business expansion opportunity with MSSP partners,” Weingarten said.

Weingarten made the comments as the Mountain View, Calif.-based company reported results for the second quarter of its fiscal 2024, ended July 31, which beat analyst estimates on both revenue and net income. SentinelOne’s stock price was up 2 percent in after-hours trading Thursday, to $17 a share.

During the quarterly call Thursday, Weingarten also responded to questions about the termination of SentinelOne’s reseller deal with cloud security firm Wiz and a recent report saying the company is exploring going private.

In the wake of a significant drop in its market capitalization since its record-setting 2021 IPO, SentinelOne has been mulling the possibility of a sale and has hired an investment bank to assist in the process, Reuters reported on Aug. 21.

After an analyst asked about the report, Weingarten said that while he wouldn’t comment on “rumors or speculation,” he sees a lot of value in SentinelOne remaining publicly traded.

SentinelOne is “laser-focused on delivering the best innovation we can, the best protection we can for our customers, maximizing our business potential,” he said. “We believe we can do that [as] best as possible as a public, independent, transparent company. And I think that that is as clear as I can be.”

‘We Still Partner With Wiz’

Following a question about what transpired with Wiz, Weingarten said that recent comments by the company — which suggested the three-year-old, $10 billion cloud security firm was open to exploring an acquisition of SentinelOne — have been a “head scratcher.”

Still, SentinelOne does continue to partner with Wiz, though in a more-limited fashion than previously, he said.

“We did not terminate the partnership,” Weingarten said during the call Thursday. “We actually canceled the reseller agreement — the reselling agreement. So we still partner with Wiz, we still work with them on the field level. We still think there’s some form of complementary technology there.”

Additionally, “the technical integration is still there,” he said.

“Wiz is a nice little startup. We like working with them,” Weingarten said. “But again, in terms of the reselling agreement, we didn’t see any contribution from that. We didn’t feel like that’s something that’s [been] fulfilled on their end. So we decided to terminate that.”

Wiz declined to comment Thursday.

Surpassing Expectations

For SentinelOne’s fiscal second quarter, revenue climbed 46 percent, year-over-year, to $149.4 million, the company reported. That surpassed analyst estimates for the quarter of $141 million.

The company also reported a non-GAAP net loss of 8 cents per share for its fiscal Q2, beating the analyst consensus estimate of a 14-cent net loss per share.

Along with its flagship AI-powered endpoint security offering, SentinelOne’s Singularity platform includes capabilities for cloud workload protection and identity security, while also providing XDR (extended detection and response) functionality for correlating and prioritizing threats.