Upwind – a next-generation cloud security provider – announced it has raised $100 million in Series A funding. The funding round was led by David Sacks’ Craft Ventures. It was joined by new investors TCV and Alta Park Capital, and all of Upwind’s existing investors, including Greylock, Cyberstarts, Leaders Fund, Cerca and Sheva-founded by NBA Champion Omri Casspi.
Upwind has seen a significant trajectory since its founding in late 2022, raising $180 million in total since its founding. This new funding round will fuel Upwind’s global expansion and innovation, with plans to double its headcount to nearly 300 people and enhance its operations across its current offices in Israel, San Francisco, the UK, and Iceland.
The company has developed a comprehensive cloud security platform with a unique approach, powering traditional CNAPP capabilities with runtime context to provide prioritized findings and help organizations focus on real risks rather than being overwhelmed by irrelevant risks. And the platform’s runtime-powered approach consolidates numerous security functionalities, such as Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR), vulnerability management, identity security, and container security. Plus, Upwind was the first to include and identify the importance of API security and deep application runtime context as part of a CNAPP.
Upwind’s next-generation approach goes beyond traditional EDR Anti Virus technologies and continuously monitors cloud environments, establishing Cloud Baselines based on actual resource activities like application and network requests. Upwind’s platform generates critical runtime context uniquely for identifying risks and addressing critical vulnerabilities, making informed decisions, maintaining a strong security posture, and significantly reducing alert fatigue.
KEY QUOTES:
“Cloud security is becoming more complex, and organizations need smart solutions to help them move fast, without breaking anything. This investment reflects the growth and confidence we’re seeing from enterprise customers and allows us to give customers tools that make a real difference. Our platform is reshaping cloud security by tackling the constantly changing factors enterprises face in real-time. By offering clear cloud topologies and better visibility, we help teams focus on their most critical threats, not theoretical risks & false alarms, fostering stronger collaboration between security and DevOps while enabling faster, safer growth.”
- Amiram Shachar, founder and CEO of Upwind
“We believe Upwind is building a generational cyber security company. The cloud security market is one of the most valuable and rapidly growing sectors within cyber. It’s experiencing a tectonic shift as organizations are maturing from agentless approaches towards Upwind’s platform which brings vital runtime context and real-time protection. Since our initial investment in Upwind 15 months ago, we’ve witnessed the market fully embrace their next generation cloud security platform, which has all the capabilities buyers have come to expect from their CNAPP vendor but all powered by a single eBPF agent at the core.”
- Michael Robinson, Partner and Head of Growth at Craft Ventures
“Cloud security is still in the early innings. Over the next decade, we believe it will grow into the most consequential market in security. We also believe demand in cloud security will shift to runtime. Upwind has timed its product expertly, and Amiram and his team have a whole lot to play for.”
- Morgan Gerlak, Partner at TCV
“As companies mature in cloud security, they quickly discover that posture management by itself is insufficient. Runtime detection and response is critical for identifying the threats that actually matter in real-time and accelerating the path to remediation. We believe that Upwind has built the best runtime-native cloud security platform in the market, and Amiram and the Upwind team are the perfect team to address this rapidly growing customer need.”
- Carson Fullard, Managing Director at Alta Park
