Upwind raises $400M after walking away from Datadog acquisition offer
Upwind, a San Francisco startup that uses AI to secure cloud infrastructure, has raised a $400 million Series C round at a $3.8 billion valuation led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from existing backers including Greylock Partners and Craft Ventures. The round comes nine months after Upwind closed its previous $250 million financing at a $1.5 billion valuation.
Upwind 是一家位于旧金山的初创公司，利用人工智能保护云基础设施。该公司近日完成了 4 亿美元的 C 轮融资，估值达到 38 亿美元。本轮融资由 Bessemer Venture Partners 领投，Greylock Partners 和 Craft Ventures 等现有投资者参与。此次融资距离 Upwind 上一轮 2.5 亿美元融资（估值 15 亿美元）仅过去九个月。
The fresh funding, which has been in the works for months, nearly fell apart after Datadog attempted to buy the company, according to a person familiar with Upwind. Datadog is a publicly traded company that sells tools for monitoring how software runs, known as observability. It didn’t offer a premium above the $3.8 billion valuation set by venture capital investors, the person said, so Upwind decided to stay independent.
据一位知情人士透露，这笔筹备数月的融资曾因 Datadog 试图收购该公司而险些告吹。Datadog 是一家上市公司，主要销售用于监控软件运行情况的工具，即“可观测性”工具。该人士称，由于 Datadog 给出的报价并未高于风险投资人设定的 38 亿美元估值，Upwind 决定保持独立。
Four-year-old Upwind has grown rapidly amid rising AI-driven cybersecurity threats. The startup has been adding $20 million to $30 million in annualized recurring revenue (ARR) each quarter and is projected to end the year at roughly $90 million, according to a person familiar with Upwind’s financials. That means that VCs and Datadog valued the startup at more than 40 times its forecast ARR, a common yardstick for pricing software companies.
在人工智能驱动的网络安全威胁日益增加的背景下，成立四年的 Upwind 发展迅速。据一位熟悉 Upwind 财务状况的人士透露，该初创公司每季度的年度经常性收入（ARR）增长在 2000 万至 3000 万美元之间，预计今年年底将达到约 9000 万美元。这意味着风险投资人和 Datadog 对该公司的估值超过了其预期 ARR 的 40 倍，这是软件公司定价的常用衡量标准。
The high multiple is also well below the 80x ARR fetched by Cyera, another fast-growing cybersecurity startup, according to TechCrunch reporting from earlier this year. Cybersecurity is poised to be the third big wave of AI software that companies will pay for after AI coding tools and customer support, Theory Ventures general partner Tomasz Tunguz recently wrote in his widely read blog.
根据 TechCrunch 今年早些时候的报道，这一高倍数仍远低于另一家快速增长的网络安全初创公司 Cyera 所获得的 80 倍 ARR。Theory Ventures 普通合伙人 Tomasz Tunguz 最近在其广受关注的博客中写道，继人工智能编码工具和客户支持之后，网络安全有望成为企业愿意付费的第三波人工智能软件浪潮。
By walking away from an acquisition offer, Upwind clearly believes that the company will ultimately be worth more than the $3.8 billion that Datadog was ready to pay for it. However, given how few cybersecurity companies have gone public in recent years, an eventual sale remains the most likely outcome for the startup. Upwind continues to draw acquisition interest, according to a person familiar with the company.
通过拒绝收购要约，Upwind 显然认为公司最终的价值将超过 Datadog 准备支付的 38 亿美元。然而，考虑到近年来上市的网络安全公司寥寥无几，最终被收购仍然是该初创公司最可能的结果。据一位知情人士透露，Upwind 目前仍持续受到收购方的关注。
The startup was founded by Amiram Shachar, who sold his previous company, the cloud spend management startup Spot.io, to NetApp for $450 million. Upwind calls its approach to thwarting threats “runtime” security, which means it alerts and remedies attacks and vulnerabilities in active services in real time. TechCrunch has reached out to both Upwind and Datadog for comment.
该初创公司由 Amiram Shachar 创立，他曾将其上一家公司——云支出管理初创公司 Spot.io 以 4.5 亿美元的价格出售给 NetApp。Upwind 将其抵御威胁的方法称为“运行时”安全，这意味着它能实时提醒并修复活跃服务中的攻击和漏洞。TechCrunch 已联系 Upwind 和 Datadog 请求置评。