Online, December 2, 2024 (Ecnetnews.com)
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Upwind, a next-generation cloud security provider, has announced today that it has raised $100 million in Series A funding. The round was led by David Sacks’ Craft Ventures (SpaceX, Palantir, Uber) and was joined by new investors TCV (Airbnb, Netflix, GoFundMe, Spotify) and Alta Park Capital (Databricks, Nubank, and Toast), as well as all of Upwind’s existing investors including Greylock (Meta, Airbnb, Coinbase), Cyberstarts, Leaders Fund, Cerca and Sheva-founded by NBA Champion Omri Casspi.
Upwind has seen a significant upward trajectory since its founding in late 2022, raising $180 million in total since its founding, as well as being recently named to the Fortune 2025 Cyber 60 and The Information’s 50 Most Promising Startups for 2024. This new funding 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.
Enterprises are rapidly moving to the cloud, driving the cloud security industry’s 20% year-over-year growth to an estimated $30 billion in 2024. In fact, according to Gartner Research VP Sid Nag, 85% of enterprises will adopt a cloud-first principle by 2025. This shift means they are also moving their most sensitive data; one study shows that 75% of organizations already store over 40% of their sensitive data in the cloud. To keep pace, these organizations require the most comprehensive cloud security solutions to help them identify critical risks and ensure cloud infrastructure security.
Upwind has developed a comprehensive cloud security platform – often referred to as a CNAPP by Gartner. Upwind has 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. The platform’s runtime-powered approach consolidates numerous security functionalities, including Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR), vulnerability management, identity security, and container security. 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 such as application and network requests. Upwind’s platform is generating critical runtime context uniquely for identifying risks and addressing critical vulnerabilities, making informed decisions, maintaining a strong security posture, and significantly reducing alert fatigue.
“Cloud security is becoming more complex, and organizations need smart solutions to help them move fast, without breaking anything,” said Amiram Shachar, founder and CEO of Upwind. “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.”
“We believe Upwind is building a generational cyber security company”, said Michael Robinson, Partner and Head of Growth at Craft Ventures. “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.”
“Cloud security is still in the early innings. Over the next decade, we believe it will grow into the most consequential market in security”, said Morgan Gerlak, Partner at TCV. “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.”
“As companies mature in cloud security, they quickly discover that posture management by itself is insufficient,” said Carson Fullard, Managing Director at Alta Park. “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.”
About Upwind
Upwind is the next-generation cloud security platform that helps organizations run faster and more securely. Upwind combines the power of cloud security posture with runtime context and real-time protection- enabling security teams to prioritize critical risks and fix them faster. Upwind was founded by Amiram Shachar and his founding partners from Spot.io (which was sold to NetApp for $450 million) and is backed by top cybersecurity investors Greylock, Cyberstarts, Leaders Fund, Craft Ventures, Cerca Partners, and Sheva, a VC fund founded by former NBA player Omri Casspi. The company has secured $180 million in funding since its founding in 2022.
