US cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks (Nasdaq: PANW), founded by Israeli Nir Zuk, is close to completing the acquisition of another Israeli startup, its eighth such acquisition. Palo Alto is about to close the acquisition of Israeli cybersecurity company Apiiro at a price estimated to be upwards of $550 million. The deal has not yet been officially announced, and neither Palo Alto nor Apiiro would comment.
Apiiro was founded in 2019, and unveiled in in October 2020, when it announced that it had raised $35 million in a funding round led by two well-known US venture capital firms, Greylock and Kleiner Perkins. As far as is known, this is the company’s only fundraise.
Apiiro’s founders are Idan Plotnik (CEO) and Yoantan Eldar (CTO), who both served in an IDF cyber unit. Plotnik sold a previous cybersecurity company Aorato to Microsoft for $200 million, and subsequently worked at Microsoft. Eldar was architect and engineering manager at Aorato.
Apiiro’s solution identifies risks and weaknesses in the code of cloud-based applications at the development stage and when they are released. It is part of a global trend known as "Shift Left", that is, security checks at an early stage of the process and not just after development is complete. British-Israeli startup Snyk, which was valued at $8.5 billion in a fundraise last year, is one of the main players in this trend of finding security problems at the development stage. Apiiro is a much smaller player, but has some notable names among its customers, such as Morgan Stanley and BlackRock.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on September 20, 2022.
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