Terms of the deal to acquire Lacework, which was once valued at $8.3 billion, were not disclosed.
Fortinet announced Monday that it has reached an agreement to acquire cloud security company Lacework in a significant consolidation deal for the cybersecurity industry.
Terms of the deal, which is expected to be completed in the second half of the year, were not disclosed.
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In a press release, Fortinet said it will integrate Lacework's CNAPP (Cloud Native Application Protection Platform) capabilities into its Unified SASE offering.
This combination will provide partners and customers with “one of the most comprehensive, complete, AI-driven cloud security platforms available from a single vendor,” Fortinet said in the statement.
The release includes a quote from Lacework CEO Jay Parikh, but does not specify whether he will join Fortinet. CRN has reached out to Fortinet for further comment.
Lacework offers a data-powered cloud security platform that collects and analyzes data from across cloud environments and provides customers with key insights, such as prioritizing threats. The platform is powered by Lacework's Polygraph machine learning engine which aims to significantly reduce the volume of alerts while identifying the most pressing cyber threats.
Lacework has raised $1.8 billion in funding and has for several years ranked among the most valuable cybersecurity companies, with a valuation of $8.3 billion achieved in 2021.
Previous media reports had indicated that cloud security company Wiz was in talks to acquire Lacework for a fraction of the company's previous valuation, but there was no indication of the terms of the Fortinet deal in Monday's release.
The acquisition comes less than a year after Lacework hired a new CRO, former VMware veteran Kevin Kiley. In a recent interview with CRN, Kelly said Lacework was in “growth mode” and that he believed Lacework was an IPO-level company. “Without any hesitation, this is definitely something we are looking forward to,” he added.
Lacework is also notable for being the third company to emerge from private equity firm Sutter Hill Ventures, following the incubation model that previously produced Pure Storage and Snowflake.
The company was founded in 2015 and Parikh was previously Vice President of Engineering at Facebook.
Signs of Lacework's struggles have been evident since May 2022, when the company laid off 20% of its employees just months after raising a $1.3 billion funding round. Several months before the layoffs, Lacework disclosed it had more than 1,000 employees.
