CrowdStrike has joined the elite ‘unicorn’ club, exceeding a $1 billion valuation following a $100 million Series D financing round.
Accel, the investor behind Facebook, Deliveroo and Dropbox, led the financing round which takes the company’s total funding raised to $256 million. Other investors participating in the financing included existing investors CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) and Warburg Pincus, as well as new investors March Capital Partners and Telstra.
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CrowdStrike is a firm offering a new way of fighting back against malware, applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to endpoint security. The clear vote of confidence in the company comes as no surprise when taking into account its recent performance in the market; the company has seen a 476% growth in new endpoint protection platform (EPP) subscriptions year-over-year,as well as 400% growth in the number of $1 million or greater transactions year-over-year.
The company has bold ambitions to become the new standard in endpoint protection – an ambition which is speedily being realised as organisations look to replace their antivirus with more effective and forward-looking solutions. More than 10% of the Fortune 1000 companies worldwide leverage CrowdStrike’s technology and services, with the company currently boasting endpoint deployments in 176 countries.
“CrowdStrike’s rapid market penetration has been one of the most impressive things we’ve seen. Accel was one of the company’s first investors, and the company’s emergence as a leader in the next generation of enterprise security is why we wanted to lead this round and support the world-class CrowdStrike leadership team,” said Sameer Gandhi, partner at Accel.
“The investment will enable CrowdStrike to build on the incredible momentum the company has experienced globally and expand its presence in domestic and international markets to meet the demand for its platform and services.”
The investment from this most recent round of financing has been earmarked for global growth, with the company also looking to use the fund to help meet the spiking demand for its CrowdStrike Falcon platform. The company claims that the platform currently processes 40 billion security events a day, aggregating one of the biggest threat databases in the industry.
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“I couldn’t be more pleased to deepen our relationships with existing investors and add another high-caliber firm like March Capital to our team. As we continue to drive our revolutionary platform to market, this substantial financial backing will allow us to expand engineering, sales, marketing, and operational resources to maintain our position as the industry leader in endpoint security and grow at an even faster rate,” said George Kurtz, CrowdStrike’s co-founder and chief executive officer.
“I can’t think of more powerful validation for our technology and vision than having our existing investors deciding to double down on their backing and being the only company in our industry that is funded by three customers.”
