Socket: Software Supply Chain Security Company Raises $40 Million (Series B)

By Amit Chowdhry • Oct 28, 2024

Socket, a company protecting software from supply chain attacks, announced a $40 million funding round. The company monitors open-source packages for malicious behaviors like backdoors, typo-squatting, and obfuscated code.

The Socket Series B $40 million funding round was led by Abstract Ventures, with participation from Elad Gil, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and a stellar group of angel investors, including Bret Taylor (OpenAI), Phil Venables (Google), Scott Johnston (Docker), Christina Cacioppo (Vanta), Ann Mather (Pixar, Alphabet, Netflix, Airbnb), and Tobias Lütke (Shopify), among others. This latest round brings Socket’s total funding to $65M, fueling its mission to modernize security for open-source software and build out its team across engineering, product, and design.

With 90% of modern applications built on open source, security has become more critical than ever. And Traditional Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools have struggled to keep up with the rising tide of supply chain attacks.

Socket’s platform now supports six programming languages, including newly added Java and Ruby, and handles critical use cases like license enforcement and reachability analysis, making it a comprehensive replacement for legacy tools.

Over the past year, Socket has shipped groundbreaking features, including AI-powered threat detection for software dependencies in six programming language ecosystems, which has enabled it to detect and block over 100 software supply chain attacks every week. This pace of innovation has been key to Socket’s rapid growth, with the company now protecting over 7,500 organizations and 300,000 GitHub repositories.

Socket plans to accelerate product development and expand its team. The company is actively hiring for roles in engineering, product, and sales as it scales to meet the growing demand for its next-gen application security platform.

KEY QUOTES:

“We’ve seen incredible momentum over the past year. Our technology has made it possible for leading AI, B2B, and finance companies to switch from legacy SCA solutions like Snyk to Socket. We’re not just catching vulnerabilities — we’re detecting and blocking malicious threats in real-time.”

-Feross Aboukhadijeh, founder and CEO of Socket

“Attackers are evolving their supply chain attacks and legacy tools aren’t catching them. Socket’s real-time threat detection helps strengthen our security posture, even from zero-day supply chain attacks.”

-Jason Clinton, CISO at Anthropic

“As generative AI drives unprecedented speed in software development, the risk of malicious or vulnerable packages slipping through is higher than ever. Socket provides preventative protection, catching threats before they can compromise organizations and enabling developers to innovate without sacrificing security.”

-Amjad Masad, Founder and CEO at Replit

“If you haven’t explored Socket yet, now’s the time.”

-Dev Akhawe, Head of Security at Figma

“Socket is revolutionizing how companies secure their software. As organizations face increasing software supply chain threats, Socket’s preventative and developer-friendly approach is exactly what’s needed. Socket’s ability to rip-and-replace legacy SCA tools has already made Socket the go-to solution for leading companies that want to massively up-level their application security. We’re proud to lead their Series B and support them in their mission to make open source software safer for everyone.”

-Ramtin Naimi, Founder and Managing Partner at Abstract Ventures

“Socket is taking an entirely new approach to one of the hardest problems in security in a stagnant part of the industry. It’s rare to see a team ship this fast and deliver such a meaningful impact.”

-Elad Gil, investor and co-founder at Color Health

“We’re building a world-class team to tackle one of the most urgent challenges in software today.”

-Feross Aboukhadijeh