Cato Networks, the provider of the leading single-vendor Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform, has announced its latest financing round, raising $238 million in equity investment. This brings the total funding for the company to an impressive $773 million, highlighting investor confidence in Cato’s leadership within the fast-growing SASE market.
The financing round, the largest to date for Cato, was led by LightSpeed Venture Partners, with participation from Adams Street Partners, Softbank Vision Fund 2, Sixty Degree Capital, and Singtel Innov8. This significant investment comes shortly after Cato welcomed Carlsberg as a major enterprise customer and received recognition as a ZTE/SASE Leader by Forrester Research. Additionally, Cato was identified as a Challenger in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Single-vendor SASE.
The valuation achieved in this round showcases investor faith in Cato’s immense market potential and the transformative power of its SASE platform. As part of this financing, Ravi Mhatre, the founder and managing director of LightSpeed Venture Partners, will join the Cato board, bringing his expertise in supporting innovative companies that disrupt and transform legacy markets.
Shlomo Kramer, the co-founder and CEO of Cato Networks, expressed his excitement regarding the funding round, stating that it reflects investor confidence in Cato’s leadership in the single-vendor SASE market. He emphasized the unique capabilities of Cato’s SASE platform, which enables organizations of all sizes to securely protect their businesses without the complexity and cost of multiple point solutions. Cato’s platform ensures a seamless customer experience and empowers IT to keep up with the pace of business.
The newly acquired funds will be utilized by Cato in three key areas. Firstly, the company aims to broaden its reach and bring Cato’s vision and customer success to a larger audience. Secondly, Cato plans to expand its partner ecosystem by offering managed Cato SASE services. Lastly, the company intends to enhance its engineering and product team responsible for delivering innovative capabilities at a high velocity.
Cato Networks was founded in 2015 by industry luminaries Shlomo Kramer and Gur Shatz, who have extensive experience in the security and networking sectors. The company was established with the goal of providing enterprise security and networking capabilities through a converged cloud service. This vision led to the creation of the SASE category, which offers businesses the ability to utilize a world-class security infrastructure combined with a global private backbone without the need to own the underlying infrastructure.
Cato’s SASE platform has been positively received in the market, with the company surpassing $100 million in annual recurring revenue in 2022 and experiencing revenue growth of over 60% year-over-year. The company’s impressive gross dollar retention rate of over 95% further demonstrates the value and improvements in security, agility, and performance that customers experience through Cato’s platform.
With over 1,800 enterprise customers, including renowned brands such as Carlsberg and TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E, Cato has proven its ability to support complex business and technical requirements. The company’s commitment to delivering an exceptional customer experience has been reflected in high ratings on Gartner Peer Insights. As of September 11, 2023, the Cato SASE Cloud received the highest overall rating (4.7 out of 5) among all single-vendor SASE platforms, based on a significantly higher number of reviews compared to other vendors in the market.
Forrester Research has also recognized Cato Networks as a leader in the SASE market, describing the company as the “poster child” for SASE. Cato’s strong security pedigree, global platform of distributed Points of Presence (PoPs), and unified networking and security solution have positioned the company as an innovator within the industry.
Looking towards the future, Cato plans to expand its cloud-first, globally distributed secure network platform to deliver new security and networking capabilities without increasing the customer’s total cost of ownership. The company’s unique visibility into real-time traffic volumes enables the development of AI/ML capabilities to detect and respond to threats in real time. Cato also aims to expand its zero-touch deployment model to increase its end-to-end visibility and control of all enterprise traffic.
For more information about Cato Networks and its SASE platform, visit their website at https://www.catonetworks.com. With its impressive funding and market recognition, Cato remains at the forefront of the fast-growing SASE market, poised to continue disrupting and transforming the industry with its innovative solutions.