Upwind – a company that provides next-generation cloud security services – announced that it has raised $100 million in Series A funding. The funding round was led by David Sacks's Craft Ventures. It is joined by new investors TCV and Alta Park Capital, and all of Upwind's existing investors, including Greylock, Cyberstarts, Leaders Fund, Cerca, and Sheva, which was founded by NBA champion Omri Casspi.
Upwind has seen a significant run since its founding in late 2022, raising a total of $180 million since its founding. This new funding round will fuel Upwind's global expansion and innovation, with plans to double its headcount to nearly 300 people and strengthen its operations across its existing offices in Israel, San Francisco, the UK and Iceland.
The company has developed a comprehensive cloud security platform with a unique approach, that leverages traditional CNAPP capabilities with runtime context to provide prioritized outcomes and help organizations focus on real risks rather than indulging in irrelevant risks. The platform runtime approach integrates several security functions, such as Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR), Vulnerability Management, Identity Security, and container security. Additionally, Upwind was the first to include and define the importance of API security and deep application runtime context as part of CNAPP.
Upwind's next-generation approach goes beyond traditional EDR Anti Virus technologies and continuously monitors cloud environments, creating cloud baselines based on actual resource activities such as application and network requests. The Upwind platform creates a uniquely critical runtime context to identify risks and remediate critical vulnerabilities, make informed decisions, maintain a strong security posture, and dramatically reduce alert fatigue.
Key quotes:
“Cloud security is becoming more complex, and organizations need intelligent solutions to help them move quickly, without breaking anything. This investment reflects the growth and trust we are seeing from enterprise customers and allows us to provide customers with tools that make a real difference. Our platform is reshaping cloud security from By addressing the ever-changing factors organizations face in real-time and by delivering clear cloud topologies and better visibility, we help teams focus on the most important threats, not theoretical risks and false alarms, fostering stronger cross-platform collaboration. Security and DevOps while enabling faster, more secure growth.
Amiram Shashar, founder and CEO of Upwind
“We believe Upwind is building a cybersecurity company for generations. The cloud security market is one of the most valuable and fastest-growing sectors in the cyber space. It is undergoing a seismic shift as organizations mature from agentless approaches toward an Upwind platform that provides critical uptime context and real-time protection.” Since our initial investment in Upwind 15 months ago, we have seen the entire market embrace our next-generation cloud security platform, which has all the capabilities buyers expect from their CNAPP vendor but all backed by a proxy eBPF one in the heart.”
Michael Robinson, Partner and Head of Growth at Craft Ventures
“Cloud security is still in its infancy. Over the next decade, we believe it will grow into the most important market in security. We also believe that demand for cloud security will shift to uptime. Upwind has expertly timed its product, and Amiram and his team have a lot to play for For him.
Morgan Gerlach, Partner at TCV
“As companies mature in cloud security, they are quickly discovering that posture management by itself is insufficient. Runtime detection and response is critical to identifying threats that actually matter in real time and accelerating the path to remediation. We believe Upwind has built the best platform Cloud-native runtime security on the market, Amiram and the Upwind team are the perfect team to meet our rapidly growing customer needs.
Carson Fullard, Managing Director at Alta Park
