Here are some of the most prominent venture capital and merger and acquisition news items from December. If you’d like SDxCentral to report on your company’s VC or M&A activity in our monthly Money Moves section, or if you have any tips on that activity, please send the information to Emma Chervek ([email protected]).

Cloud security unicorn Aqua Security acquired software supply chain security provider Argon Security to shift further left and extend Aqua’s vision to secure the full software development lifecycle. 

“It's a very natural extension of what we're doing,” Aqua Security CEO Dror Davidoff said. The acquisition “extends our capabilities further to the left to not only look at the application but also secure the supply chain of the application, the build stage of the application.”

Argon maps and protects the continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines while using a zero-trust approach to detect unusual changes in the development environment. Its detection technology checks on every stage of the software delivery process for code-tampering, which prevents supply chain attacks, the vendor claims.

Composable infrastructure vendor Liqid raised a $100 million Series C funding round, bringing the startup’s total raised to around $160 million.

Lightrock and affiliates of DH Capital co-led Liqid’s latest investment with participation from Panorama Point Partners and Iron Gate Capital. The startup plans to use the funding to invest in go-to-market strategies, add headcount to its workforce, and expand to markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific region.

About 70% of the proceeds will be used for employee hiring to grow the business, Liqid CEO and co-founder Sumit Puri told SDxCentral. The company more than doubled its workforce this year, and Puri expects to double the company size again in the next few quarters.  

Equinix acquired MainOne.

ReliaQuest announced a new funding round that values the company at more than $1 billion.

Forum Mobility raised $7.5 million in seed funding.

SpeQtral raised $8.3 million in financing.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems closed its Series B funding round with $1.8 billion in investments.

Optimizely acquired Welcome.

Cloudflare acquired Zaraz.

LogDNA closed its Series D funding round with $50 million in investments.

Morpheus Data raised $15 million in funding.

Intel announced its intention to take Mobileye public in mid-2022 via an initial public offering.

Incode raised $220 million in Series B funding at a $1.25 billion valuation.

Gadget raised $8.5 million in funding.

Tackle.io raised $100 million in Series C funding at a $1.25 billion valuation.

Torq announced it raised $50 million in Series B investments.

Broadcom acquired AppNeta.

Grip Security raised $25 million in Series A funding.

UP9 acquired MockLab.

CData raised $140 million in Series B funding.

Cato Networks announced a strategic investment from Swisscom Ventures.

Jumio acquired 4Stop.

CloudBees closed its Series F funding round with $150 million in investments. 

Shabodi raised $3.3 million in an oversubscribed seed round.

Cockroach Labs raised $278 million in Series F funding at a $5 billion valuation.

SnapLogic raised $165 million in funding.

UncommonX closed its Series A funding round with $36 million in investments. 

Cyberhaven raised $33 million in Series B funding.

Unisys acquired CompuGain in an $87.3 million deal.

Ermetic closed its Series B funding round with $70 million in investments. 

Lokalise raised $50 million in Series B funding.

Fshi Technology closed its Series B funding round with $21 million in investments. 

Cequence Security raised $60 million in Series C funding.

LogDNA raised $50 million in Series D funding.

GitLab acquired Opstrace.

Noname Security raised $135 million in Series C funding at a $1 billion valuation.

Atmosec raised $6 million in seed funding.

Gtmhub closed its Series C funding round with $120 million in investments. 

Accenture acquired Zestgroup.

SADA acquired ByteWave Digital.

AppDirect announced an investment of $80 million to launch AppDirect Capital.

Airbyte raised $150 million in Series B funding.

Oracle acquired Cerner.

PlainID raised $75 million in Series C funding. 

ZeroFox announced plans to become a publicly traded company with an expected valuation of $1.4 billion.

Microsoft acquired Xandr. 

Tackle.io raised $100 million in Series C funding. 

Automation Anywhere acquired FortressIQ.