StackRox Pulls In $26.5M

StackRox, the leader in container and Kubernetes security, announced today that it has secured an additional $26.5 million in funding and achieved more than 240% revenue growth in the first half of the year. Menlo Ventures led the funding round with participation from Highland Capital Partners and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise along with StackRox's existing investors, Sequoia Capital and Redpoint Ventures. The strong first-half revenue results exceeded the company's pre-pandemic goals and were driven by companies accelerating their digital transformation initiatives and adopting cloud-native technologies and DevSecOps.

Priyanka Sharma, general manager of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), cited pandemic compute resources and the rise of DevSecOps as the top trends responsible for shaping the cloud-native community for the foreseeable future. StackRox's Kubernetes-native architecture helps companies adapt to changing business conditions and secure their cloud-native applications as they support remote work and embrace DevSecOps.

"Companies are adopting containers and Kubernetes at a record pace to enable the rapid application development that's needed for business innovation. The pandemic has heightened the urgency for innovation, and remote work has added far greater security demands," said Kamal Shah, StackRox CEO. "Our Kubernetes-native solution enables a true Security-as-Code approach to DevSecOps and protecting cloud-native applications, delivering security that is built in, not bolted on. As a result, we're seeing substantial growth in demand for our Kubernetes-native security platform compared to legacy container security solutions."

StackRox will use the $26.5 million in new funding to accelerate growth, expand in key geographies such as EMEA, and support R&D efforts to continue its industry-leading innovation in Kubernetes-native container security and compliance. As part of this investment, Venky Ganesan, partner, Menlo Ventures, has joined the StackRox board.

"We've seen the innovation companies are enabling by building applications in containers and Kubernetes. The need to protect those applications, at the scale and pace of DevOps, is crucial to realizing the business benefits of that innovation," said Venky Ganesan, partner, Menlo Ventures. "While lots of companies have focused on securing the container, only StackRox saw the need to focus on Kubernetes as the control plane for security as well as infrastructure. We're thrilled to help fuel the company's growth as it dominates this dynamic market."

According to research from CNCF, nearly 80% of organizations surveyed are running Kubernetes in production, and these deployments continue to grow in size. StackRox has seen a similar increase in demand for and adoption of Kubernetes-native security across a variety of industries and market sectors, particularly cloud-native innovators, Global 2000 Enterprises, and the Federal Government.

To learn more about StackRox, please visit https://www.stackrox.com/.

Commentary from additional investors:

Corey Mulloy, General Partner, Highland Capital Partners:

"Kubernetes represents one of the most important paradigm shifts in the world of enterprise software in years. StackRox sits at the forefront of Kubernetes security, and as enterprises continue their shift to the cloud, Kubernetes is the ubiquitous platform that Linux was for the Internet era. In enabling Kubernetes-native security, StackRox has become the security platform of choice for these cloud-native app dev environments."

Paul Glaser, Vice President, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Head of Pathfinder:

"At HPE, we are working with our customers to help them accelerate their digital transformations. Security is a critical priority as they look to modernize their applications with containers. We're excited to invest in StackRox and see it as a great fit with our new software HPE Ezmeral to help HPE customers secure their Kubernetes environments across their full application life cycle. By directly integrating with Kubernetes, StackRox enables a level of simplicity and unification for DevOps and Security teams to apply the needed controls effectively."

About StackRox
StackRox helps enterprises secure their containers and Kubernetes environments at scale. StackRox delivers the industry's first and only Kubernetes-native container security platform that enables security and DevOps teams to enforce their security and compliance policies across the entire container life cycle, from build to deploy to runtime. The StackRox Kubernetes Security Platform integrates with existing DevOps and security tools, enabling teams to quickly operationalize container and Kubernetes security. StackRox customers span cloud-native companies, Global 2000 enterprises, and government agencies. StackRox is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, California. To learn more, visit www.stackrox.com and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.