Cato more than doubles its valuation in one year with largest funding round to date. Total financing reaches $532 million.
TEL AVIV, Israel, October 19, 2021— Cato Networks, the provider of the world’s first SASE platform, announced its largest funding round to date of $200M at a market valuation of $2.5 billion. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with the participation of existing investors Greylock, Aspect Ventures / Acrew Capital, Coatue, Singtel Innov8, and Shlomo Kramer. The new funds will fuel Cato’s sales, technology, and business growth to further support the security and global networking needs of large enterprises.
“Cato is at the forefront of SASE transformation,” said Shlomo Kramer, CEO and co-founder of Cato Networks. “Large enterprises are deploying Cato as their global network to reap the operational and business benefits of Cato’s proven and mature SASE platform. Cato is rapidly expanding its service capabilities, global footprint, and sales and marketing teams, while preserving our unique DNA of agility, simplicity, and ease of doing business that is so valued by customers and partners.”
Market Adoption Grows Among Large Enterprises for Cloud-native SASE Architecture
Secure and optimized access to applications anytime and anywhere is at the heart of digital transformation. It has eluded customers and solution providers because secure optimized access crosses the boundaries of networking, security, and access — the three silos that dominate the legacy IT landscape.
Cato was built to break these silos and is the inspiration for the SASE category. The Cato SASE Cloud, built on the proprietary Cato SPACE technology, is the only proven and mature SASE platform that can holistically, quickly, and easily, deliver on the secure and optimized application access challenge. Only Cato can connect and secure all enterprise edges — sites, mobile users, and cloud resources — with one global cloud-native platform. This is the essence of a true SASE platform.
The Cato SASE Cloud is distributed across more than 65 PoPs worldwide. With such extensive geographic coverage and a proven technology stack, Cato has been able to address the needs of very large global enterprises. Today, dozens of such enterprises spend more than $250,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR) with Cato, an increase of 163% year-over-year, and several global enterprises spend over $1M in ARR.
“Cato has seen an amazing adoption of its SASE platform by increasingly larger enterprises,” said Yoni Cheifetz, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. “What started as a disruptive innovation and a novel idea, is now a fast-growing business that is at the heart of enterprises’ mission critical operations. We are delighted to partner with Cato and support its mission of delivering optimal and secure access to all users, locations, and applications – everywhere.”
Case in point is Baker Tilly, a leading advisory, tax, and assurance firm. “The Cato SASE platform has transformed the way we connect our enterprise,” said Matt Jennings, Director, Enterprise Technology at Baker Tilly. “Cato made us nimble, enabling us to address significant business changes, like M&A, with near zero effort. No more product-by-product configuration, updates, and troubleshooting – just getting things done, quickly. It doesn’t matter how many sites or users we deploy or where, I know with Cato they will always get the same secure and optimal access to the resources they need.”
And with larger enterprises come new requirements. Some enterprises require greater scale, others deeper security inspection, and still others additional capabilities specific to their industry and business. The new funding will fuel that expansion, enabling Cato to continue leading in the converged remote access, networking, and network security market that is SASE.
“Cato pioneered SASE, creating the category before it existed,” said Scott Raynovich, Founder and Chief Analyst at Futuriom, a research and analysis community focused on next-generation cloud technologies. “They saw the need early on for enterprises to deliver global, cloud-delivered networking and security. It’s a vision that is now paying off with tremendous growth.”