SASE leader Cato Networks announced its Series G funding round, raising $359 million led by new investors, including Vitruvian Partners and ION Crossover Partners, as well as existing investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Acrew Capital, and Adams Street Partners. The funding brings Cato’s valuation to over $4.8 billion and total funding to over $1 billion, marking a significant milestone in the company’s mission to redefine enterprise security.
This investment builds on Cato’s track record of leadership: from the creation of SASE with the convergence of security and networking in 2015 through the recognition of Cato’s vision by the global analyst community when the term “SASE” became defined in 2019, and continues to stretch the boundaries of SASE and AI security.
Legacy infrastructure is often viewed as a liability due to its high maintenance costs, slow adaptability, and fragmented nature. And now IT and security leaders face mounting complexity, limited staff, and overwhelming pressure to secure everywhere and enable anything.
Cato provides enterprise-grade security and networking as a single cloud-native platform. Unlike a legacy patchwork of firewalls, routers, cloud proxies, and point solutions, the Cato SASE Cloud Platform is architected from the ground up to be self-maintaining and autonomously scalable for enterprises.
Cato’s approach to AI goes beyond automation and empowers IT and security professionals (CIOs, CISOs, network architects, and security analysts) to move faster, make smarter decisions, and focus on initiatives that move the business forward.
How the funding will be used: With the additional funds, Cato will continue to challenge the industry’s perception of SASE and AI security, expand to additional use cases, and increase the total addressable market (TAM) of the company. To do that, Cato will:
1.) Advance AI Security – Expand capabilities that enable enterprises to adopt AI across the business in a secure and controlled manner.
2.) Advance Platform Innovation – Increase investment in research and development (R&D) to expand capabilities across DEM, LAN Security, IoT/OT Security, SD-WAN, SSE, XDR, and ZTNA—all natively converged in a single, cloud-native platform.
3.) Expand Global Reach – Increase Cato’s partner ecosystem and customer-facing teams to meet surging global demand.
KEY QUOTES:
“With more than 3,500 enterprise customers, consistent hyper-growth, and repetitive and scalable wins against all leading competitors, Cato is a proven and mature business to invest in. Our true SASE platform and decade of AI innovation differentiates Cato from legacy vendors that favor a portfolio of point solutions. Customers and partners understand the difference and select Cato to benefit from proven security, operational efficiency, and business agility.”
“With Cato, AI handles the noise so our customers can focus on strategy. We’re embedding AI into the DNA of infrastructure itself. Routine tasks are automated. Response workflows are accelerated. Risk management decisions are guided by actionable live data, not outdated reports. This isn’t about tools—it’s about a new operating model that is efficient, resilient, and optimized.”
Shlomo Kramer, co-founder and CEO at Cato Networks
“Cato has spent the past decade building and optimizing the next generation of cybersecurity, and we are proud to partner with them as they continue to raise the bar for AI-driven security and networking. The company’s visionary leadership, best-in-class growth and retention rates, and relentless focus on innovation and customer experience are what led us to invest in Cato. We look forward to supporting Cato’s next phase of growth as they expand their market reach and transform how enterprises connect and secure their digital businesses and use of AI.”
Vitruvian Partners
“As a longtime investor in Cato Networks, we’ve had a front-row seat to its incredible journey, from defining the SASE category to leading it. Cato is reshaping enterprise security with a unified, AI-powered SASE platform that’s secure, scalable, and built for the cloud-first world. They’re not just eliminating IT complexity. They’re unlocking real agility for the digital business. We’re proud to further support Cato as they continue setting the standard for SASE leadership.”
Ravi Mhatre, partner and co-founder at Lightspeed Venture Partners
