Eyal Waldman joins Cato Networks' Board as cyber unicorn prepares for 2025 IPO

In preparation for its upcoming IPO, the cybersecurity company Cato Networks is expanding its board of directors. Eyal Waldman, founder of Mellanox, which was sold to Nvidia for $7 billion in 2019, will be appointed as a director of the company. He will be joined by Gili Iohan, the former CFO of Varonis, a cybersecurity company traded on Wall Street with a market value of $6 billion. Currently, Waldman serves as the chairman of the investment company Waldo Holdings, while Iohan is a general partner at the ION Crossover Partners fund. Both will begin their roles as independent directors at Cato on October 1.

The addition of Waldman and Iohan, both of whom bring significant expertise and experience in leading publicly traded technology companies, marks another step in Cato's journey toward its IPO in New York. Shlomo Kramer, the company’s founder and CEO—and one of the co-founders of Check Point—has stated several times that Cato plans to go public by the end of 2024. Current estimates suggest the company could be valued at more than $3 billion, based on its last funding round approximately a year ago.

Eyal Waldman.

However, Cato has not yet published its IPO prospectus, so the offering will likely be postponed until 2025. According to earlier reports, the company plans to raise around half a billion dollars, with support from investment banks Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Barclays.

Cato is regarded as a pioneer in the cybersecurity SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) market and has developed solutions for secure remote connections to organizational systems in cloud environments. This market has experienced significant growth, especially with the rise of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, as Cato's systems enable secure management of hybrid work environments. The company announced that it had surpassed $200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in July and that its customer base had grown to more than 2,500 companies. To date, Cato has raised nearly $800 million from investors, including SoftBank's Vision Fund 2, Coatue, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Ravi Mhatre, founder of Lightspeed, also serves on Cato’s board of directors.

Other members of Cato’s board include Shlomo Kramer, co-founder Gur Shatz (who left the company earlier this year), Jerry Chen from Greylock Partners, Yoni Cheifetz from Lightspeed, and independent director Ronen Faier, who was recently appointed interim CEO of SolarEdge. Cato currently employs around 1,200 people.