Cybersecurity Firm Cato Networks Raises $130M At Over $1B Valuation

Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity company Cato Networks announced that it raised $130 million in a new investment round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. NY-based hedge fund Coatue, a new investor, also participated in the round, as did and existing investors, Greylock, Aspect Ventures / Acrew Capital, and Shlomo Kramer, a co-founder of Cato.

Kramer, also the co-founder of cybertech giant Check Point, and Gur Shatz, founded Cato Networks in 2015. The Cato Networks develops network security-as-a-service, integrating secure web gateway, firewall-as-a-service, advanced threat protection, next-generation firewall, and secure, global SD-WAN (software-defined WAN) into a single, cloud service called Cato Cloud.

Before the round, Cato was valued at $1 billion, putting the company at well over that valuation currently. Cato raised $55 million last year and another $77 million earlier this year.

“Only the Cato Cloud was built from the ground up as converged and cloud-based global SASE [secure access service edge] service,” said Kramer in a press statement, calling SASE “the hottest area in IT” and the funding round an attestation to Cato’s “leadership of the SASE market.”

“SASE will transform the multi-billion-dollar markets for enterprise networking and security, and we believe Cato will lead this transformation. Cato’s architecture is purposely built to enable IT to support current and future business requirements such as the need to dynamically support secure and optimized work from anywhere”, said Yoni Cheifetz, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Cato says over 300 enterprises worldwide rely on the company to connect and secure their corporate networks. The company has offices in Singapore and the US, in addition to Israel.