Israeli cybersecurity company SentinelOne has raised $267 million at a valuation of over $3 billion, according to a report by Reuters. Reports had been circulating that the company was about to complete a fund raising round, and according to Reuters its valuation has risen almost threefold since its previous fund raising round in February. SentinelOne CEO Tomer Weingarten told Reuters that the company would probably hold an IPO within twelve months.
SentinelOne was founded in 2013 by Weingarten and Almog Cohen, who no longer had an active role in the company. It has developed an artificial intelligence-based platform for securing personal computers, servers and cloud servers and other devices connected to the Internet.
Over the years, SentinelOne has raised $500 million. The current round was led by Tiger Global, with participation by Sequoia Capital and existing investors Insight Partners and Third Point Ventures. Among the company's other investors are Upwest, Samsung Ventures, Accel, and Red Point.
SentinelOne's market has undergone a shakeup in recent years, mainly because of events at the companies that controlled te traditional market, such as Symantec and McAfee. Symantec, for example, was acquired by Broadcom late last year.
In an interview with "Globes" at the beginning of this year, before th coronavirus pandemic broke out, Weingarten said, "Before 2013, there were almost no cybersecurity companies using machine learning, and the solutions were more deterministic. I haven't seen Check Point, Palo Alto and Cisco at the forefront of machine learning. Clearly there are elements that also include machine learning, but with us it was the focus right from the start and in everything we do, from identifying malware to automation. So the chances are that what is happening here at this time is better than at many other companies."
Reuters says that SentinelOne has seen a boost to its business from more employees working from home because of the coronavirus pandemic. "I don't think what happened this year is reversible. What happened with Covid-19 is unlocking another stage in the evolution of work," Reuters quotes Weingarten as saying.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on November 11, 2020
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