Security company SentinelOne closed a $120 million Series D funding round bringing its total haul to more than $230 million.
Insight Partners led the round — this is the venture capital firm that last week bought threat intelligence company Recorded Future for $780 million. Samsung’s investment arm, NextEquity, and all other previous investors including Third Point Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, and Data Collective also participated in the Series D.
The fast-growing endpoint security vendor will use the latest capital “to continue innovation and growth around our product, and also doubling and tripling down on our sales and go-to-market,” said COO Nick Warner.
At the mega-security event RSA Conference in March, SentinelOne announced its new IoT device security product called Ranger. Warner said the company will use the Series D to fund its go-to-market approach for Ranger, which will ship later this summer or early fall.
Ranger converges an endpoint protection platform (EPP) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) into a single agent architecture. This means SentinelOne customers don’t need to deploy additional agents into their distributed sensor network to protect IoT devices. The company claims it’s the first vendor to expand into the IoT space with the same single codebase and deployment model.
Once the existing agent is turned on, Ranger uses artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor and control access to all IoT devices and autonomously notify security teams of vulnerabilities, rogue devices, and anomalous behavior.
“We’re not reliant on human intervention of watching in the cloud and after the fact responding to threats,” Warner said. “Our agents can take immediate, machine-speed action to prevent attacks from happening in our customers’ networks. We’re able to deliver on this true promise of next-gen prevention and antivirus replacement combined with all the hunting capabilities and the true combination of EPP and EDR in a single, autonomous agent.”
SentinelOne Growth, IPO PlansWarner said this autonomous approach gives SentinelOne it’s competitive advantage — and explains its growth.
The company boasts more than 2,500 customers and said it experienced 217% year-over-year growth and 140% year-over-year growth in Fortune 500 bookings.
Warner won’t disclose the company’s valuation, but said it’s a “multiple-larger than previous rounds.” The company also declined to disclose its valuation after earlier funding rounds.
The Series D will likely be SentinelOne’s last funding round, Warner said. “We’re on track to cashflow positive, and that timeframe will be measured in quarters not multiple years,” he added. “Some companies — and post-IPO companies — in our space are still losing money hand over fist.”
He didn’t name names, but he’s talking about endpoint security vendor CrowdStrike, which recently set its initial public offering share price for 18 million shares at between $19 and $23 each, setting it up to raise upwards of $414 million when it debuts on the Nasdaq exchange. In its initial filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, CrowdStrike said it expects to incur net losses “for the foreseeable future” as it invests in its business and works to capture a larger share of the market.
And there’s also Carbon Black, another endpoint security vendor that continues to report quarterly losses after it raised $152 million in its IPO last year.
Speaking of IPOs, SentinelOne expects to make its public market debut “in a couple years, or a few years,” Warner said. “Ultimately we see ourselves being a very good fit in the public market.”
Other Security Spending NewsAnd because this is the security space — where vendors and VC firms — throw millions of dollars at startups on a daily basis — there are other acquisitions and funding announcements this week.
Security veteran Imperva yesterday said it will acquire Distil Networks, a security startup that specializes in bot management, for an undisclosed amount. Earlier this week Sophos, another legacy security software vendor, said it acquired Rook Security also for an undisclosed amount. Rook Security provides managed detection and response services.
Also yesterday GuardKnox, which makes security software and hardware for cars, said it closed a $21 million Series A round.
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