Netskope Scoops $100M Funding

Follow the money in networking these days and, often as not, it will lead you into the land of security. That's certainly the case with the $100 million six investment firms added to Netskope's coffers in the company's just-closed Series E funding round.

The round of funding was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Accel, with existing investors Social Capital and Iconiq Capital joining new investors Sapphire Ventures and Geodesic Capital to complete the list. The round of investment was over-subscribed and brings the total amount Netskope has raised to $231.4 million.

In a telephone interview with SecurityNow.com, Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri said the funding round's success was a statement of how investors see Netskope's position in the market. "We've never gone out fundraising; we instead have had an over-subscribed pre-emptive round," Beri said. "Their thesis for what happens in cloud and security is ours. This is a statement that they're all in on Netskope."

One question: What will the company do with this infusion of cash? In a a blog post, Beri said the company's cloud security platform soon will address web content via Netskope for Web, which will leverage the vendor's Netskope Context Engine "to drive smarter decisions and bring governance and security of cloud and web into a unified console and delivered through our cloud-native platform."

During the telephone interview, Beri expanded on the blog post, saying, "Our thesis is that cloud has changed everything. It's upended the security market. The characteristics of cloud and how people work today has changed. That's what Netskope was built for."

Beri said that a funding round such as this one has an impact on how a company is seen by customers and potential customers. "This makes us independent. When we sell to some of the largest companies in the world it helps," he said.

Netskope is a five-year-old company that, according to Beri, has nearly 400 employees in offices around the world. Netskope's headquarters are in Los Alto, Calif.

— Curtis Franklin is the editor of SecurityNow.com. Follow him on Twitter @kg4gwa.