Networking and security startup Perimeter 81 closed a $40 million Series B round led by Insight Partners. The new investment brings its total raised to $65 million in less than eight months.

The two-year-old company built its own cloud-edge network. Its network-as-a-service provides user and branch internet security, branch interconnectivity, and endpoint security. In February it rolled out a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform that combines its zero-trust networking with SonicWall’s cloud security services including content filtering, application control, intrusion prevention, file sandboxing, real-time deep memory inspection, and antivirus.

SonicWall also led Perimeter 81’s Series A funding round.

The new investment will allow Perimeter 81 to expand its team and boost product development, said CEO and co-founder Amit Bareket. “Our goal is really to disrupt and change the way networking and security are consumed,” he said. “It’s a big step up for us as a company, and it requires us to think differently. We are very focused on how we can win the space race for SASE — and there are big competitors. We need to run faster and do big things.”

Bareket made a similar comment about winning the SASE space race back in February. But, as he noted, the competitive landscape has grown over the past six months. Since then, major security and networking vendors including Cisco, Juniper Networks, VMware, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks launched their own SASE platforms. Despite these recent, high-profile entrants, Perimeter 81 has a couple strategic differentiators, Bareket said.

“Many competitors are speaking about SASE, but Perimeter 81 has two maturity points,” he explained. “The first maturity point is the network, the fact that we own and operate our cloud edge network. This is a piece that many of the SASE vendors are missing. So the fact that we operate a multi-tenant, multi-regional network and developed expertise on how to scale it and operate it is a big differentiator.”

The second differentiator is Perimeter 81’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) go-to-market strategy, Bareket said. “We are not landing a million-dollars deals right out of the gate. We start small and let the customer expand with us and grow with our product, and I think this approach fits much better, too. It’s a much better fit for this new normal when you cannot fly, you cannot meet with customers, and everything needs to be very easy for companies to change the way they consume infrastructure as they work from home. And we have all the ingredients in place already.”

That strategy seems to work. Perimeter 81 has almost 1,000 customers, Bareket said, and grew more than 400% in annual recurring revenue year over year.

In addition to its SonicWall partnership, Perimeter 81’s platform also integrates with Splunk. As it builds out its SASE and other security capabilities, Bareket said the startup will continue partnering with larger security vendors as well as developing new capabilities in house. And he’s not ruling out acquisitions down the road.

The Tel Aviv, Israel-based company currently employs about 85 people. It's looking to hire 25 additional workers, 15 in Israel and 10 in the United States, now, Bareket said, plus further expansion in 2021. It’s also opening a new office in California.

Photo: Perimeter 81 co-founders Amit Bareket (left), the company’s CEO, and CPO Sagi Gidali.