SentinelOne Eyes $10B IPO For Later This Year: Report
A $10 billion market cap would be more than triple SentinelOne’s $3 billion valuation in November and would be the highest valuation for a newly traded pure-play cybersecurity company.
SentinelOne is interviewing bankers about an initial public offering listing that could value the endpoint security vendor at more than $10 billion, according to Bloomberg.
The IPO could happen this year, Bloomberg reported late Friday, although sources cautioned that SentinelOne’s plans are in the early stages and the IPO timing and valuation could still change. SentinelOne didn’t respond to a CRN request for comment.
A $10 billion valuation would be more than triple the $3 billion valuation Mountain View, Calif.-based SentinelOne notched in November when it closed a $267 million Series F funding round. It also would be the highest valuation for a newly traded pure-play cybersecurity company, topping McAfee’s $9.5 billion valuation in October 2020 as well as top rival CrowdStrike’s $6.6 billion valuation in June 2019.
[Related: SentinelOne To Buy Data Analytics Firm Scalyr For $155 Million]
Today, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based CrowdStrike is the most valuable company in all of cybersecurity, with a market cap of $48.84 billion. CrowdStrike and SentinelOne made dueling acquisitions last month to become the market leader in Extended Detection and Response, with SentinelOne buying data analytics firm Scalyr for $155 million and CrowdStrike buying log management startup Humio for $400 million.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz told CRN last month that SentinelOne would have loved to have Humio and ended up with something in Scalyr that doesn’t have the same scale and technology. SentinelOne CEO Tomer Weingarten fired back that same day, telling CRN that SentinelOne actually passed on Humio since Scalyr offered superior technology and a better cultural fit.
SentinelOne examined several players in the data analytics space as potential acquisition targets, but almost immediately homed in on Scalyr thanks to its ability to ingest data from any source and take action quickly upon indexing, COO Nicholas Warner told CRN. The deal will give SentinelOne’s channel partners a broader product set, including Scalyr’s log management and event data cloud offerings.
SentinelOne was founded in 2013, employs 756 people and has raised $696.5 million eight rounds of outside funding, according to LinkedIn and Crunchbase. The company has increased its head count by 52 percent over the past year from 496 people, with the most aggressive hiring coming in SentinelOne’s sales and engineering organizations, according to LinkedIn.
The total addressable market for securing cloud workloads will surpass the endpoint over the next five to 10 years, Weingarten wrote in the 2021 CRN CEO Outlook feature. Legacy anti-virus is still widely used, and replacing legacy offerings will continue to bear fruit for MSSPs along with replacing competing next-generation endpoint detection and response tools, he said.
The company in October hired former Splunk and Palo Alto Networks channel leader Ken Marks to be its global channel chief, where he is overseeing resellers, distributors, managed security service providers, systems integrators, OEM and technology alliance partners.
SentinelOne is focused this year on helping solution providers maximize the benefits offered through its channel program such as partner lead generation campaigns, market development funds, not-for- resale products, as well as sales tools and incentives to attract new customers, Marks wrote in his 2021 CRN Channel Chiefs profile.
The company’s MDF efforts will be focused on demand creation activities for new customer acquisition and expanding the company’s existing install base, making it easier for partners to request funds and receive their reimbursements quickly, according to Marks. SentinelOne is also looking to further automate its partner experience, Marks said.