Israeli security company Cato Networks has raised $359 million in a new round of financing. This brings the company’s valuation to over $4.8 billion, a significant increase compared to 2023, when it was considered to be worth $3 billion.
Cato Networks was founded in 2015 by Shlomo Kramer and Gur Shatz. This was not the first time Kramer had been involved in the launch of a successful security company, as he was also co-founder of Check Point Software.
Strong growth in uncertain times
The financing round was led by Vitruvian Partners and ION Crossover Partners, together with existing investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners and Acrew Capital.
The focus on SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) appears to be a choice that is once again appealing to investors. Cato Networks combines network services and security in a single cloud platform. This approach is gaining popularity as organizations seek integrated solutions. This trend toward unification and a world of “single panes of glass” for securing and monitoring IT environments is sometimes referred to (including by us) as “platformization.”
Read also: The security platform: what is it and what does it offer?
IPO on the horizon (or maybe not?)
The company had already been preparing for an IPO in 2025, although no concrete plans have been announced yet. In fact, it is extremely uncertain whether this will happen. Based on its investments, Cato Networks is alleged to be overvalued and is also considering a sale.
However, Cato Networks is not standing still. It has introduced AI functionality within the Cato SASE Cloud Platform to optimize all security, access, and network policies. The tool is currently limited to Firewall-as-a-Service (FaaS), but may be expanded in the future. What should not be expanded via this tool is the enormous number of policies that organizations maintain within their IT environments. The tool is designed to reduce this.
Tip: Cato Networks introduces AI for SASE policy optimization