Snyk's valuation soars to $4.7 billion following $300 million series E

Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity startup Snyk's valuation continues to surge, with the company announcing on Wednesday that it has reached a valuation of $4.7 billion after the closing of a series E financing, totaling $300 million. The transaction included both primary and secondary offerings and resulted in $175 million of new capital into the business. The company has now raised a total of $470 million, quadrupling its valuation since the beginning of 2020.

The round was co-led by Accel and Tiger Global, with participation from existing investors Addition, Boldstart Ventures, Canaan Partners, Coatue, GV (formally Google Ventures), Salesforce Ventures, Stripes and funds managed by BlackRock; new investors include Alkeon, Atlassian Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Geodesic Capital, Sands Capital Ventures and Temasek.

Snyk's security product is aimed mainly at developers, providing a solution that finds and fixes vulnerabilities and license violations in open source dependencies and container images. The company experienced extraordinary momentum since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, while continuing collaboration with customers such as Google, Salesforce, Revolut and ASOS.

Snyk, which was founded in 2015, separates itself from most cyber companies by targeting developers at companies rather than security experts. It offers its product on a freemium basis, with the option of paying for additional premium features. Securing external libraries has become essential in the modern working space that includes constant interaction with cloud platforms.

The company additionally announced the hiring of Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer Jeff Yoshimura, CIO Erica Geil, Vice President, Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) Sales, Shaun McLagan, and the appointment of two new Board Members, Michael Scarpelli, Chief Financial Officer, Snowflake, and Ping Li, Partner, Accel.

"Our relentless focus on the experience of the 2.2 million developers building applications of all kinds securely with Snyk has resulted in our success to date, and we believe there is an exponential, generational opportunity still in front of us," said Peter McKay, CEO, Snyk. "This latest investment allows us to accelerate our growth at every level - doubling down on our successful product led growth strategy, adding to our customer roster, recruiting talent to our team worldwide and expanding geographically."