Why We Invested in Upwind Security… Again
By Michael Robinson and Kevin Gabura
We are excited to announce that Craft Ventures is leading the $100 million Series A investment in Upwind Security. We are joined by new investors TCV and Altapark along with existing investors Cyberstarts, Greylock, Leaders Fund, Cerca, and Sheva. We first invested in Upwind 15 months ago, and we’re thrilled to be doubling down based on Upwind’s remarkable progress in transforming cloud security, the exceptional feedback from customers on their next generation cloud security platform, and the team’s outstanding execution.
Craft has invested in some of the best founding teams who built generational companies by redefining some of the largest markets (I.e. SpaceX, Palantir, Slack, Airbnb, Uber). We believe Upwind has all of the ingredients to build a generational company in cyber security. Cloud security represents some of the most valuable territory in the cyber security landscape. The market opportunity is $20Bn+, growing more than 20% a year, and continues to expand its surface area across application security, data security and more.
From the outset, we’ve admired the Upwind team’s ambitious vision to rethink the architecture of cloud security platforms, placing an eBPF sensor at the core to deliver runtime context and real-time protection for organizations. The cloud security market is competitive and the platforms are very broad, which required Upwind to build a very wide and deep product from day one. Upwind’s unique advantage is the quality of its product and engineering organization. They’ve assembled a top-calibre team and created a culture that enables product development at a pace that we rarely see. It has been inspiring to see the speed of innovation happening at Upwind.
Now the market is also taking notice — we’ve spent the last year speaking with countless security buyers about Upwind’s approach to cloud security, including CISO’s from Craft’s CISO advisory board. It’s now clear to us that buyers no longer want just visibility into their cloud (Posture Management); they now want runtime context and real time protection (Workload Protection + Detection & Response). In addition, Upwind has launched their own agentless CSPM, which is an important element of the CNAPP.
It’s becoming more and more apparent that other tangential products to the cloud security platform, such as application security, API security, and data security, will also benefit from an eBPF approach. One eBPF sensor that can deliver all these features powered by runtime context & ability to detect, prioritize, respond, and take action, across the entire cloud will be incredibly powerful, essentially “one sensor to rule them all.”
We couldn’t be more excited to deepen our partnership with the Upwind team. They are building a deep and wide platform in a massive market that is now fully embracing their eBPF sensor-based approach. While many teams are allured to sell early, the Upwind founders have already experienced an exit (sold Spot.io to NetApp for $450M), they are laser-focused on their customers and ultimately revolutionizing cloud security. We are still in the early innings of experiencing how eBPF sensors will continue to transform cloud security and the platforms we use to protect our environments; Upwind is ideally positioned to capture the market opportunity!
Up and Upwind.