In today’s digital age, cybersecurity continues to be an important area for investment among businesses and venture capitalists. According to a report by Momentum Cyber, venture capital funding in the cybersecurity sector amounted to $18.5 billion in 2022, indicating its growing popularity. A recent survey by Gartner has shown that about nine in 10 company boards consider cybersecurity as a “business risk” rather than merely a technical or IT issue. Wiz, a cloud security company founded by Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, Yinon Costica, and Roy Reznik, has recently raised $300 million in a Series D funding round, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Greenoaks Capital Partners, and angel investors such as Howard Schultz and Bernard Arnault, valuing the company at $10 billion post-money.
Introduction
Cybersecurity has become one of the most important issues for businesses worldwide. The rise in cyberattacks has led to an increased demand for cloud security solutions, which has attracted significant investment from venture capitalists. Wiz, a cloud security company, has become one of the most successful startups in the industry. In this article, we will discuss the recent funding round of Wiz, its mission, and how it is helping enterprises to improve security, increase visibility, and drive agility.
Wiz Raises $300M in Series D Funding Round
Wiz, a cloud security company, recently announced that it raised $300 million in a Series D funding round. The round was co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Greenoaks Capital Partners, with participation from angel investors including Howard Schultz and Bernard Arnault. This latest funding round has brought the company’s total funding to nearly $1 billion ($900 million) and valued it at around $10 billion post-money.
Wiz was founded in March 2020 and has quickly become one of the largest cybersecurity unicorns in the world. The company claims to be the fastest software-as-a-service (SaaS) company to achieve a $10 billion valuation. The initial team worked together for over 20 years, including as Microsoft’s cloud security group leads and as co-founders of enterprise cybersecurity firm Adallom, which was acquired by Microsoft for $320 million.
Wiz analyzes infrastructure hosted in public cloud services such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and more for risk factors that could allow hackers to gain control of assets and obtain sensitive customer data. The company maintains a “security graph” that correlates information across the different areas that a company is trying to protect, such as the network, identity, secrets, or workloads.
Wiz’s Mission
Wiz’s mission is to help companies develop a new maturity level in their cloud environments by improving security, increasing visibility, and driving agility. According to CEO Rappaport, the new funding will be put towards product development and hiring. When Wiz was first launched, it set out to design a product with the world’s leading enterprises in mind, and all the complexity and operational considerations their dynamic cloud environments present. With Wiz, companies can analyze their cloud environments, understand the risks, and take action to improve their security posture.
The Challenge of Cloud Security
Cloud security is one of the biggest challenges that companies face today. With more and more data being stored in the cloud, it has become a prime target for cybercriminals. In the past, the traditional approach to cloud security has been to install agents on each host to monitor and protect against threats. However, this approach can be slow and resource-intensive, and it is difficult to scale in dynamic cloud environments. Wiz offers an innovative approach to cloud security by utilizing an agentless, API-centered approach