SentinelOne Raises $267 million; Palo Alto acquires Expanse for $800M

SentinelOne announced Wednesday its Series F raise of $267 million in a round led by  Tiger Global Management, with participation from Sequoia Capital Global Equities and existing investors including Insight Partners and Third Point Ventures. (PYMNTS.com)

The cybersecurity company revealed that its valuation, at over $3 billion, had tripled since its previous Series E round in February 2020. That round raised $200 million.

Pandemic and remote working create huge opportunities for hackers

“Today’s cybercriminal takes full advantage of the expanded attack surface afforded through the shift to predominantly remote work environments,” said Teddie Wardi, Managing Director, Insight Partners, in a statement. “SentinelOne had the foresight to design and deliver a cloud-native autonomous platform solution far ahead of its time.”

SentinelOne’s Singularity XDR Platform

The Singularity cybersecurity platform leverages patented behavioral AI models to protect and monitor every asset in the enterprise.

SentinelOne “enables the detection of more previously undetectable threats through its AI-powered behavior analysis that can predict and prevent malware and ransomware attacks,” said Forrester Consulting in a research study earlier this month.

“The past eight months have been an inflection point in our business across the globe,” said Nicholas Warner, COO, SentinelOne. “The demand for flexible technology that can stand alone — without requiring services and staff — will only continue to increase as the threat landscape evolves. Our ease of deployment and autonomous remediation has made us the go-to solution to replace other next-gen products at scale.”

“Attack surface management”: Palo Alto acquires Expanse Inc

Also on Wednesday, Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW) announced its agreement to acquire Expanse Inc for approximately $ 800 million. Of the purchase price, $ 670 million is to be paid in cash and stock. Another approximately $ 130 million is payable in replacement equity awards. Palo Alto is a global cybersecurity leader. (CRN)

Palo Alto too cited heightened cybersecurity risks following the rapid shift to cloud and remote working.

“As companies embark on digital transformation, they often leave critical IT assets exposed to the Internet, creating vulnerable points that attackers can exploit,” the company said in a statement.

Expanse monitors attack surfaces

Expanse’s Internet collection and attribution platform provides customers with a view of the enterprise from the outside. It reveals what an attacker sees while looking for a point of weakness.

Palo Alto said that Expanse is a leader in attack surface management.

According to CRN, Expanse was founded in 2012. It employs 186 people and has raised $136 million in four rounds of outside funding.

Most recently it completed a $70 million Series C round in April 2019 led by TPG, according to LinkedIn and Crunchbase.

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