Photo: Expanse co-founders Tim Junio and Matt Kraning
Expanse is a rapidly growing cybersecurity company that recently announced it has raised $70 million in Series C funding led by TPG Growth. This round of funding also included investments from individuals like Arianna Huffington, Peter Thiel, Egon Durban, Taylor Glover, and Sam Palmisano. And returning investors NEA, IVP, Founders Fund, and MSD Capital also participated in this round.
What does Expanse do? It offers an Internet information technology (IT) operations management platform. And this round of funding validates Expanse’s rapid success and major market opportunity for its unique approach of indexing everything connected to the public Internet to inform customers in real-time what they own and what is at risk while protecting the most critical assets at the same time through its Expander product. Expanse also tracks Domain Name System (DNS) protocol information and registration record systems around the world to build up its database.
Over $500 billion is spent per year on Internet connectivity and IT services. But organizations do not have a central tool for managing all of their Internet-connected assets. And one of the biggest reasons for major cybersecurity breaches is due to the inability to monitor all assets. And organizations still typically utilize error-prone processes of populating spreadsheets with the help of software tools.
“We’re seeing unprecedented traction because every large organization is unable to map the constantly changing boundaries of its network unless it’s using Expanse,” said Expanse co-founder and CEO Tim Junio. “While internet services—SaaS, IaaS, IoT or public cloud—provide businesses cutting-edge tools for their problems, the underlying internet infrastructure these tools are built upon is broken. As organizations’ reliance on these services grows, so too does their need to better understand, manage, and secure their information that flows across the internet’s infrastructure—and we are the only company providing them an integrated solution to do so.”
While enterprise networks become increasingly complex, Cisco is projecting that there are going to be three times as many Internet-connected devices at 28.5 billion by 2022. And at the same time, more countries will follow the European Union’s lead with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with greater demand and penalty placed on businesses to govern their data and manage networks in accordance with regulations.
“Today, Expanse provides an essential suite of services that every business should be using to understand and protect the true extent of their network,” added Tim Millikin of TPG. “We see immense potential in Expanse that puts them on a pathway to being one of the world’s most impactful software companies. The company’s underlying technology is uniquely positioned to serve as a platform that can serve a wide variety of purposes including governance, management, and more. This platform will help users better navigate and secure their technology infrastructure, and we are excited to help them grow.”
Ever since Expander launched, it gained a lucrative foundation of elite customers across government, Fortune 500 companies, and Internet service providers. The company’s customers include CVS/Aetna, PayPal, Capital One, Allergan, and Hudson’s Bay Company. And since launching, Expanse tripled sales year-over-year. This growth includes more than $100 million in federal contracts across all military services including the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, U.S Army, and U.S. Air Force.
According to Business Insider, Junio came up with the idea while reading an academic paper from the University of Michigan about scanning the Internet for security flaws. And Junio met Expanse co-founder Matt Kraning while they were doing consulting work for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) over big data projects for the war in Afghanistan.
“Enterprises don’t know the edge of their network unless they’re using Expanse,” explained IVP general partner Somesh Dash. “Whether we’re talking about security or governance, it’s simply bad business if an organization cannot monitor and oversee all their internet assets. Expanse’s unique approach to inform businesses in real time what they own, what’s at risk, and how to protect their most critical assets—is the reason the company is tripling sales year-over-year.”
With this funding round, Expanse is planning to accelerate its business’ go-to-market strategy, including international expansion beyond existing customers in the UK, Canada, Australia, and Japan. And this funding round will be used for growing sales/marketing and engineering teams.
