Pentera Announces $150M Series C at $1 Billion Valuation to Disrupt Legacy Vulnerability Management Market

BOSTON & TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Pentera, the leader in Automated Security Validation (ASV), today announced it has raised $150 million in Series C funding led by K1 Investment Management, with participation from Evolution Equity Partners and Insight Partners. Additional investors include Awz Ventures, a Canadian-Israeli VC group, and Blackstone (NYSE: BX). The round brings Pentera’s valuation to $1 billion after only three years in the market since the debut of its automated penetration testing technology.

The funding makes Pentera the highest-valued company in its category. With more than 400 enterprise customers, the recent funding allows Pentera to scale operations across all functions and regions, and grow its headcount from 150 to 300 employees by the end of 2022, on its journey to an IPO.

“Pentera’s exponential growth has proven that enterprises are no longer willing to compromise for assumptions and simulations, but rather demand real-world validation of their security resilience against the latest cyber attacks,” said Amitai Ratzon, CEO, Pentera. “Pentera is excited for the partnership with K1 as they share our vision to achieve category leadership in security validation. We are especially grateful to our employees, customers, partners, and investors for sharing our passion for the revolution we bring to the cybersecurity world.”

“Legacy vulnerability management platforms have given a false sense of security to the market,” said Christian Grant, Senior Vice President, K1 Investment Management. “Given the ever-changing threat landscape, constant and persistent testing is the only way to maintain a truly secure security posture. Pentera is the gold standard in the industry and we are thrilled to partner together for this next phase of growth.”

“Security teams struggle with prioritizing and dealing with a growing number of common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs). Furthermore, legacy vulnerability management approaches often focus on vulnerabilities that have low likelihood of being compromised,” said Dr. Arik Liberzon, Co-Founder and CTO, Pentera. “Pentera’s agentless platform helps these teams pinpoint their real security gaps. Our customers can finally trust the effectiveness of their cybersecurity stack and prove to their CEOs and boards that they’re secured against cyber attacks.”

Pentera will use the new funding to grow its global operations and product line, with the mission to empower every enterprise in every vertical to confidently reduce cyber risk and become attack ready. Recent additions to Pentera’s product portfolio include its RansomwareReady™ and Log4Shell validation modules.

Additional Supporting Quotes

“Pentera has disrupted the traditional approach to manual penetration testing by enabling automated continuous testing and security validation, expanding its TAM in both enterprise and security service providers,” said Thomas Krane, Managing Director at Insight Partners. “The company has achieved incredible growth and demand in a few short years, revolutionizing the industry. We are proud to continue our partnership with Amitai and the team at Pentera.”

“Pentera’s continuous and automated pen-testing platform enables security teams to do more in less time to mitigate the risks that traditional penetration testing methods were not created to resolve,” said Richard Seewald, Founder and Managing Partner at Evolution Equity Partners. “The company has boundless opportunity to improve cyber posture worldwide and we are pleased to be partnering with Amitai and the team at Pentera.”

“We are extremely proud of the Pentera team for this major milestone and feel privileged to have been part of their story since the beginning,” said Yaron Ashkenazi, Founder and Managing Partner at Awz Ventures. "Awz fueled Pentera’s growth and its initial sales efforts to the North American market and continues to support the company. We are excited to see what is next in store for Pentera”.

About Pentera

Pentera is the category leader for Automated Security Validation, allowing every organization to test with ease the integrity of all cybersecurity layers, unfolding true, current security exposures at any moment, at any scale. Thousands of security professionals and service providers around the world use Pentera to guide remediation and close security gaps before they are exploited. For more info, visit: pentera.io.

About K1

K1 is a global investment firm that builds category-leading enterprise software companies. K1 partners with strong management teams of high-growth technology businesses to help them achieve successful outcomes. With over 110 professionals, K1 and its operating affiliate, K1 Operations LLC, change industry landscapes with operationally-focused growth strategies designed to rapidly scale portfolio companies. Since inception of the firm, K1 has partnered with over 180 enterprise software companies including industry leaders such as Apttus, Buildium, Checkmarx, Clarizen, ControlUp, Emburse, FMG Suite, Granicus, IronScales, Litera Microsystems, Onit, Rave Mobile Safety, RFPIO, Smarsh, WorkForce Software and Zapproved. For more information, visit k1capital.com and follow on LinkedIn.

About Evolution Equity Partners

Evolution Equity Partners, based in New York City, Palo Alto, London and Zurich makes investments in rapidly growing cybersecurity and enterprise software companies that safeguard our digital world. The firm was founded by investor and technology entrepreneurs Richard Seewald and Dennis Smith, who manage and lead the firm and its partners have been involved as founders, investors and as senior operating executives in leading software companies around the world. Evolution currently has over $1 billion of assets under management in a growing portfolio of market leading companies. Learn more at www.evolutionequity.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.