Cybersecurity startup Venafi announces $100mn round of funding

Venafi, the Salt Lake City-based cybersecurity firm, announced this week it had secured $100mn in its latest round of funding. The round was lead by capital and growth-stage investor TCV, with other cash injections from QuestMark Partners and NextEquity Partners.

Venafi’s cybersecurity research and services are specialized in machine identity protection, securing connections and communications between machines. Venafi protects machine identity types by orchestrating cryptographic keys and digital certificates that safeguard the flow of information to trusted machines and prevent communication with untrusted machines.

CEO Jeff Hudson told the press that “Identity is the foundation of security. The cyber world is made up of machines, and all machines require identities for the cyber world to be secure. As a society, we understand the risks associated with human identity theft very well, and we spend over $8 billion per year protecting human identities. However, most organizations don’t yet understand the risks associated with machine identities and, as a result, spend almost nothing to protect them. This leaves our global digital economy at risk. TCV has a long history of partnering with the world’s leading technology firms, so we’re very excited about the opportunity to work with them. Their investment and expertise will help us ensure that the world’s machines, including hardware and software from smart machines, virtual servers, applications, containers, and more, are connected, safe and secure.”

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According to Venafi’s press release, “the funding will be used to accelerate Venafi’s growth and to cement the firm’s growing market leadership.” $12.5mn from the fund will also be set aside for use in Venafi’s Machine Identity Protection Development Fund, which the company is using as an incubator to “accelerate the integration of machine identity intelligence into a wide range of machines”.

“The team at TCV is excited about our partnership with Venafi,” said Jake Reynolds, general partner at the company. “DevOps and IoT are driving growth in the number of machines thanks to cloud computing, virtualization, and the proliferation of connected devices. Venafi is well-positioned to provide the machine identity protection for enterprise machines, and we look forward to supporting the Venafi team as they continue to scale in this rapidly expanding market.”