Investors and founders continue to take advantage of the rise in valuations of privately-held technology companies to realize their shares, after the stagnation of the past two years. After a series of exits by Israeli cybersecurity companies, application program interface (API) security company Noname Security is in advanced negotiations on a sale for $500 million, according to the TechCrunch website.
According to the report, the buyer is US company Akamai, which has already bought four Israeli companies, one of which was Neosec, which also deals in API security. Akamai set up an Israeli development center for data security based on its acquisition of Cotendo in 2011. Since then, it has also bought Guardicore and ChameleonX.
The other week, another Israeli cyber company, Gem Security, was sold to Wiz, also privately held, for $350 million, and last month Avalor was sold to Zscaler for $350 million and Flow Security was sold to CrowdStrike for $120 million.
Positive return for investors
The reported acquisition price for Noname is lower than the $1 billion valuation it received in its last fund raising round in December 2021. On that basis, the most recent investors in the company will post a decline in value of their investments. The big winners in the acquisition deal, if it takes place, will be the early-stage investors, among them Gili Raanan and Lior Simon’s Cyberstarts, and Insight Partners. Lightspeed was another early investor, but it also participated in the latest round.
Nevertheless, $500 million still gives a positive return for investors who have invested a total of $220 million.
Noname Security was founded by Oz Golan, former director of research and development at NSO, and Shay Levi, who previously worked at ironSource and Meta. The pair first came to Cyberstarts with the idea of setting up a new cybersecurity company, and after meetings with data security managers at various companies, decided to focus on API.
APIs enable software programs to communicate and present information together. Tourism websites such as Booking.com, for example, use them to enable hotels to display room availability at all times. They represent a vulnerability for large enterprises, and cyber attacks can exploit them to steal customer details from databases. Noname competes with Salt Security, another Israeli company, which has so far raised $270 million, and was valued at $1.4 billion in it last fund raising round in February 2022.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on April 14, 2024.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.