SentinelOne Picks Up $200M In Funding To Expand AI Cyber Platform

SentinelOne, which provides monitoring and security services for laptops and any kind of device connected to a network, has picked up a $200 million Series E funding round, the company said in reports.

The new development catapults SentinelOne’s value to $1.1 billion, and comes after a doubling of its value in the last year. Eight months ago, the company announced its Series D funding round, which buoyed the company to around $500 million. The massive increase in value is a sign of the times for cybersecurity firms. The influx of funding has given SentinelOne the ability to remain in startup mode, privately funded, for some time to come, though company officials admit that it’s time for it to go public.

This latest funding round was led by Insight Partners, with aid from Tiger Global Management, Qualcomm Ventures, Vista Public Strategies of Vista Equity Partners, Third Point Ventures and other anonymous previous investors.

CEO and Founder Tomer Weingarten said there was no rush to change the company’s status, and that it had “one to two years” left of growth as a private firm.

Cybercrime has become a prominent factor in many dealings in the online world, which has only made cybersecurity all the more valuable as a market. SentinelOne is concentrating its efforts on endpoint security, an area valued around $8 billion, according to analysts. By 2024, analysts project that this market could be worth around $18.4 billion.

The factor driving endpoint security is that everyone has become connected to their company networks, from mobile employees to desk-based strategists, to the full-time executives calling the shots. They often use more than one device to do their jobs. For that reason, the problem has become chaotic — one survey found that around 30 percent of managers can’t identify all the endpoints they manage.

SentinelOne’s artificial intelligence-based solution places a value on speed. Weingarten said the company relies on a combination of detecting each endpoint and applying modes of protection, detection and response all at once.